HISTORY 


DAVID  GRIDVE 


MRS  -  HUMPHRY-  WAPD 


<TJ 


y. 


O 


THE 

HISTORY  OF   DAVID   GRIEVE 


tllBt  tin  ins  saum&licjjp  scfjretten, 
'  ttur  tm  ISn&Hcfjen  nacjp  alien  Setten 


THE   HISTORY 


OF 


DAVID     GRIEVE 


BY 

MKS.    HUMPHKY    WAKD 

AUTHOR  OF  'ROBERT  ELSMERE,'  ETC. 


Xeto  ¥orfe 
THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON  :   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 

1905 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1891, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Special  edition  in  paper  covers,  April,  1905. 


Norton  o 

J.  S.  Cashing  &  Co.-  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO 
THE   DEAK   MEMORY 

OF 
MY   MOTHER 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  I 
CHILDHOOD 


PAGE 
1 


BOOK  11 


YOUTH  ...» 


123 


BOOK  III 

STORM  AND  STRESS 


BOOK  IV 

MATURITY 


PKEFACE 

LONDON  :  May  2,  1892. 
DEAR  MR.  SMITH, 

A  few  days  ago  there  came  into  my  head  the  idea 
of  writing  you — my  friend  and  publisher — an  'open  letter' 
which  might  serve,  if  you  thought  well,  as  a  little  preface  to 
the  sixth  and  popular  edition  of  '  The  History  of  David  Grieve ;' 
and  I  was  turning  the  notion  over  in  my  mind  when  I  fell  upon 
a  passage  in  M.  Renan's  last  volume  of  '  Souvenirs,'  which  he 
has  called  '  Feuilles  De"tache"es.'  He  is  describing  his  relations 
with  the  'Journal  des  De"bats'  and  with  M.  Silvestre  de 
Sacy,  the  editor  of  that  well-known  newspaper  when  the  young 
ex-seminarist  and  future  author  of  the  'Vie  de  Jesus'  first 
joined  its  staff.  '  I  owe  to  M.  de  Sacy,'  says  M.  Renan,  '  some 
of  the  moral  rules  that  I  have  always  followed.  I  owe  to  him 
in  particular  the  habit  of  never  replying  to  newspaper  attacks 
even  when  they  contain  the  greatest  enormities.  When  I  sub- 
mitted to  him  different  cases  of  possible  exceptions,  his  answer 
was  invariable  :  "  Jamais,  jamais,  jamais  /"  I  believe  that  on 
this  point,  as  on  so  many  others,  I  have  conscientiously  followed 
the  counsels  of  my  old  master.  Du  haut  du  del  M.  de  Sacy  sera 
content  de  moi.' 

'  Jamais  ! ' 

It  is  true  that,  a  little  further  on,  M.  Renan,  with  his  usual 
hatred  of  the  absolute,  begins  to  qualify  and  ponder  a  little — 
falls  wondering,  after  all,  whether  '  nowadays  M.  de  Sacy  would 
not  change  his  mind.'  But  all  the  same,  that  '  Jamais  I '  of  M. 
de  Sacy  lingered  in  my  ear,  and  stood  in  the  way  of  my  own 
small  project.  '  No,  no  ! '  I  have  said  to  myself  ;  '  M.  Renan's 
old  friend  was  a  thousand  times  right.  If  I  let  myself  put 
down  the  things  now  fermenting  in  me,  I  shall  be  answering 
my  reviewers  ;  and  what  can  be  more  futile  ?— what  even,  if  I 
may  say  so  without  arrogance,  more  superfluous  ?  For,  as  our 


viii  THE    HISTORY    OF    DAVID  GRIEVE 

English  criticism  is  constituted  at  the  present  moment,  does  it 
not  perpetually  answer  itself  ?  It  has  no  recognised  leaders ; 
and  when  it  attacks,  it  falls  at  a  moment's  notice  into  violence. 
Now  the  snare  of  violence  is  contradiction  ;  and  if  contradiction 
is  not  the  note  just  now  of  large  tracts  of  English  reviewing, 
what  is  ?  Let  it  alone,  and  finish  M.  Kenan's  entertaining 
volume.' 

But  no.  Even  that  '  Jamais  I '  is  not  strong  enough,  and  I 
take  up  my  pen  determined  somehow  both  to  write  my  letter 
and  to  profit  by  the  wisdom  of  M.  de  Sacy.  After  all,  does  it 
not  depend  upon  what  is  meant  by  '  answering '  ? 

In  the  first  place,  however,  that  word  '  contradiction '  haunts 
me,  and  before  I  turn  to  one  or  two  very  general  matters,  on 
which  I  have  asked  you  to  give  me  this  opportunity  of  saying  a 
public  word  or  two,  let  me  draw  your  attention  for  a  moment — • 
a  passing  tremulous  moment — ix>  those  three  Quarterlies  which 
in  this  month  of  grace  have  been  bombarding  '  David  Grieve.' 
(Ah !  I  feel  that  when  you  come  to  this  you  will  be  nervous. 
You  will  say  to  yourself,  '  This  will  never  do — Mrs.  Ward  can- 
not, after  all,  refrain.'  No,  no  !  you  will  see  it  will  all  come 
right.)  So  let  us  look  ! — on  our  way  to  other  things.  As  for 
me,  it  is  like  the  bogies  of  my  childhood — the  more  I  look,  the 
less  I  shake.  There  is,  first  of  all,  the  writer  in  the  '  Quarterly,' 
who  is  now,  as  always,  what  you  might  expect  to  find  him. 
This  time  he  is  equally  displeased  with  all  the  recent  births  of 
time.  The  situation  in  literature,  as  he  describes  it,  is  sombre 
indeed.  Nevertheless,  his  style  is  tripping,  and  his  humour  con- 
fident ;  one  perceives  that  after  all,  perhaps,  at  bottom,  like  the 
reader,  he  remembers  that  the  '  Quarterly'  has  wailed  over 
many  generations,  that  '  howsoe'er  the  world  goes  ill '  the 
thrushes  still  sing  in  it,  and  cheerfulness  is  best.  Still,  though 
he  is  cheerful,  he  is  severely  confident,  and  when  he  tells  me  in 
the  same  breath,  first,  that  '  sixteen  centuries  ago '  the  religious 
puzzles  with  which  people,  and  especially  David  Grieves,  trouble 
their  heads  in  the  present  day  were  all  satisfactorily  settled, 
and  next,  that  '  David  Grieve '  is  '  tiresome  as  a  novel  and  in- 
effectual as  a  sermon,'  I  am  for  the  moment  so  carried  away  by 
the  Olympian  sureness  of  the  tone  that  I  find  both  statements 
equally  true,  and  am  naturally  depressed  by  the  last.  But 
there  is  balm — not  only  in  Gilead,  but  where  one  least  looks  for 
it.  Public  report  tells  me  that  if  the  'Quarterly'  has  used 
whips,  the  '  Edinburgh '  has  used  scorpions,  and  I  go  on  to  my 
second  reviewer  in  fear  and  trembling.  And  in  the  'Edin- 


PREFACE  ix 

burgh '  I  do  indeed  discover  an  extremely  hostile  gentleman 
writing  in  an  agitation  which  betrays  him  into  a  very  quagmire 
of  repetitions,  and  finally  leads  him,  through  a  breathless  series 
of  the  most  trenchant  adjectives  known  to  the  language,  up  to 
the  composition  of,  surely,  two  of  the  most  incompetent  pages 
ever  penned  in  defence  of  the  Christian  religion  !  But  at  the 
same  time  I  stumble  on  a  little  sentence  dropped  out  by  the 
way,  which  arrests  me  by  its  odd  incongruity  with  its  surround- 
ings. '  David  Grieve,'  of  course,  '  is  a  failure,'  but  all  the  same 
the  writer  who  so  labels  it  contrives  to  admit  that  he  has  found 
it  '  a  powerful  story,  at  times  of  absorbing  interest.'  How  be- 
wildering !  But  how  soothing!  For  clearly  the  'Edinburgh' 
and  the  '  Quarterly  '  cannot  both  be  right.  A  book  cannot  be  at 
one  and  the  same  time  'tiresome  as  a  novel  and  ineffectual  as 
a  sermon,'  and  '  a  powerful  story — of  absorbing  interest.'  The 
two  statements  cancel  out  like  those  mysterious  sums  of  one's 
childhood,  which  I  still  remember  as  though  they  were  some 
pleasant  conjuring  trick — amusing  and  impenetrable. 

And  when  I  bring  in  my  third  critic— him  of  the  'Church 
Quarterly ' — the  cancelling  process  becomes  brisk  indeed.  My 
new  reviewer  holds  up  poor  '  David,'  if  I  remember  right,  as  one 
of  several  shocking  examples  showing  the  decline  of  '  theology 
and  morality '  in  fiction.  But  his  ways  are  gentler  than  those 
of  his  colleagues,  and  I  notice  with  some  inward  glow  that  he 
has  let  my  tale-spinning  beguile  him  a  good  deal.  The  'Edin- 
burgh' only  rails  the  more  because  against  its  will  it  has  been 
interested  ;  but  the  '  Church  Quarterly,'  in  the  midst  of  its  hard 
sayings,  will  still  confess  that  it  has  laughed  over  Lucy's  social 
pangs,  and  been  touched  by  Lucy's  dying.  The  book  shows  '  a 
total  absence  of  humour,'  says  the  '  Edinburgh '  fiercely  (the 
italics  are  mine,  they  merely  represent  the  general  energy  of  the 
context) ;  but  here  is  the  '  Church  Quarterly '  talking  of  '  a 
refined  and  delicate  sense  of  humour,'  of  '  mingled  humour  and 
pathos,'  of — 

But  no  !  this  is  absurd.  I  must  not  count  my  compliments. 
I  must  remember  that  they  too,  for  the  moment,  '  cancel  out.' 

Once  more.  The  '  Quarterly '  is  clear  that  '  David '  is  '  dis- 
tinctly and  surprisingly  inferior '  to  its  predecessor  '  in  all  the 
arts  and  devices  necessary  to  produce  a  literary  composition.' 
But  the  '  Edinburgh '  puts  it  in  this  way  :  the  'workmanship,' 
'  critical  ability,'  and  '  gift  of  literary  expression '  are  the  same  ; 
the  defects  are  about  equal ;  but  '  the  later  novel  has  greater 
interest,  more  passion,  more  powei',  and  more  pathos.'  As  for 


x  THE    HISTORY   OF  DAVID    GRIEVE 

the  '  Church  Quarterly,'  it  says  roundly  that  '  David  Grieve '  is 
a  great  improvement,  so  that  on  the  whole  this  little  sum  leaves 
me  in  good  spirits. 

Finally  the  '  Quarterly/  as  I  have  before  remarked,  is  so 
contemptuously  certain  that  Athanasius  and  Nicsea  ('sixteen 
centuries'  back  bring  us  up  somewhere,  I  think,  just  behind 
Nicsea  ?)  left  nothing  for  German  or  any  other  theologians  to 
do,  and  that  all  those  'puzzled  commonplaces'  which  poor 
David  stole  from  Germany  or  Oxford  were  really  comfortably 
disposed  of  at  that  early  date — it  is  so  certain  of  these  things,  it 
tells  us,  that  to  this  side  of  the  matter  it  will  have — or  rather  it 
endeavours  to  have — nothing  at  all  to  say.  Its  dignity  revolts. 
Arid  perhaps  it  remembers  how  much  it  had  to  say  of  this  kind 
in  the  case  of  '  Robert  Elsmere,'  and  will  not  repeat,  even  to 
a  world  that  forgets.  But  the  '  Edinburgh '  neither  feigns  nor 
feels  a  composure  of  the  sort.  It  stands  and  wrings  its  hands, 
lamenting  that  '  such  an  attack  as  Mrs.  Ward's  might  well  put 
the  defenders  of  Christianity  on  the  alert.'  And  meanwhile 
the  biographer  of  'David  Grieve,'  standing  between  the  two 
voices — the  voice  of  ill-assured  contempt  and  the  voice  of  angry 
alarm — does  not  know  whether  to  laugh  or  cry  !  She  can  only 
find  one  thing  to  say — one  little,  foolish,  personal  thing.  Did 
neither  of  these  gentlemen  ever  possess  a  college  friend  with 
whom  he  talked  and  to  whom  he  wrote  on  those  matters  of 
'whence'  and  'whither'  which  have  a  trick  of  engaging  our 
attention  at  some  period  of  life  ?  No  doubt,  no  one — or  very 
few — ought  to  feel  an  interest  in  them.  But  still  can  he  re- 
member any  such  futile  moments  or  no  ?  If  he  can,  were  they 
not  a  part  of  life — for  the  time,  at  least,  an  important  part  of 
life — just  so  much  and  no  more  ?  And  if  they  were,  can  he  not 
allow  a  '  David  Grieve,'  who  had  no  college  friends,  his  thoughts 
and  his  journal,  unorthodox  and  irritating  though  it  be — as 
at  least  a  part  of  life — so  much  and  no  more  ?  Why  scold  his 
biographer  because  she  tries  to  fill  in  the  picture  as  each  man's 
memory  fills  in  his  own  1  Is  it  her  fault  if  every  rich  human 
life  contains  these  things  1  The  real  point  is,  Do  men  and 
women  trouble  their  hearts  and  heads  about  these  matters, — 
do  they  affect  action  and  conduct  ?  If  so,  the  novelist  claims 
them  as  he  claims  all  else  that  belongs  to  life — under  the  con- 
ditions of  his  art  bien  entendu — and  the  critic  who  will  not  play 
the  game,  so  to  speak,  who  stands  and  breaks  into  personalities 
about  the  painter  when  he  should  be  judging  the  picture  as  a 
picture 


PREFACE  3d 

Here,  indeed,  I  have  fallen  headlong  into  the  snare !  I  am 
'answering'  on  my  own  account  —  there  can  be  no  possible 
doubt  of  that — and  I  see  your  admonitory  look.  Well,  let  us 
come  to  the  point.  Let  me  have  done  trifling  with  M.  de  Sacy's 
'  Jamais  I '  and  take  up  those  more  serious  matters  for  which  in 
truth  I  am  disquieting  you  with  this  letter.  And  first  let  me 
return  a  moment,  but  in  another  spirit,  to  my  three  latest  critics, 
lest  I  should  inadvertently  misrepresent  them  as  they,  to  my 
thinking,  have  sometimes  misrepresented  '  David  Grieve.'  It  is 
quite  true  that  some  of  their  most  formidable  dicta  '  cancel  out ' 
with  astonishing  neatness,  and  to  the  stimulus  of  that  sense  of 
humour  in  which  the  'Edinburgh'  finds  David's  biographer  so 
deficient.  But  it  is  also  true  that  in  certain  canons  and 
methods  of  criticism  they  are  very  closely  agreed ;  and  because 
it  is  so,  and  because  the  articles  are  long,  simultaneous,  and 
conspicuous,  it  may  be  well  to  take  them  as  representative  of 
much  else — I  will  not  say  in  the  mind  of  the  public — but  at  any 
rate  in  the  mind  of  a  portion  of  the  press.  All  three  dislike 
and  resent  what  they  call  the  intrusion  of  '  theology '  into  a 
novel,  and  the  two  older  Quarterlies  are  especially  intolerant 
of  '  the  novel  with  a  purpose,'  of  any  writing  within  the  domain 
of  art  which,  as  the  '  Quarterly '  puts  it,  aims  at  '  reforming  the 
world.'  Great  stress  is  also  laid — particularly  in  the  'Edin- 
burgh ' — on  that  method  of  reviewing  which  consists  in  putting 
together  all  that  one  may  know,  or  imagine  one  knows,  about 
the  personal  history  of  a  writer,  and  framing  one's  literary 
judgment  to  suit. 

Now  these  points — what  is  meant  by  a  '  novel  with  a  pur- 
pose,' or  by  '  dragging  theology  into  fiction,'  and  the  legitimacy 
of  the  'personal'  method  of  reviewing — are  worth  discussion, 
and  I  am  not  ungrateful  to  the  Quarterlies  for  having  turned 
my  attention  to  them  once  more.  Let  me  take  the  last  first,  as 
being  the  most  diverting ;  for  I  have  a  certain  love,  as  I  fear 
my  books  betray,  for  a  '  serious  ending.'  The  '  personal '  method 
consists  apparently  in  examining  whether  to  your  knowledge 
the  author  of  a  given  book  has  ever  been  personally  placed  in 
the  precise  situations  he  describes,  and  judging  his  work  accord- 
ingly. It  leads  to  deductions  of  this  kind — '  Mr.  A.'s  pictures 
of  convict  life  cannot  possibly  be  well  done,  since  Mr.  A.- — we 
know  it  for  certain — has  never  been  a  convict.  As  for  Mr.  B.'s 
descriptions  of  immorality  and  divorce — absurd  ! — we  happen 
to  know  that  a  better  husband  and  father  than  Mr.  B.  does  not 
exist.  And  what  does  Miss  C mean  by  talking  to  us  about 


xii  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID  GRIEVE 

peasants  ?    Miss  C lives — we  have  looked  it  up — in  D 

Street,  Kentish  Town.     Now  what,  we  should  like  to  ask,  have 

English,  or  still  more  Scotch  peasants  to  do  with  D Street, 

Kentish  Town  ?  As  for  Mr.  F.,  we  know  all  about  his  relations, 
and  are  not  to  be  taken  in  ;  none  of  them  ever  attempted  what 
Mr.  F.  has  attempted  ;  the  inference  is  obvious.' 

The  danger  of  this  method  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  be  informed 
enough,  and  that  your  literary  judgments  are  apt  to  be  kept 
waiting  while  you  are  quarrelling  with  '  Men  of  the  Time '  for 
not  supplying  you  with  detail  enough  to  make  them.  The 
attractions  of  the  '  personal '  method  of  criticism  are  no  doubt 
great.  Sainte  -  Beuve  has  a  rapturous  passage  in  which  he 
declares  that  he  never  understood  Chateaubriand  till  he  knew 
all  about  Chateaubriand's  sisters.  Still,  by  that  time  Chateau- 
briand was  dead — which  in  this  connection  is  something.  In- 
formation of  the  personal  sort  is  apt  to  accumulate  after  a 
writer's  decease;  and  criticism,  as  the  'Edinburgh'  conceives 
it,  is  thereby  made  easier.  During  a  writer's  lifetime  I  con- 
stantly notice  that  while  the  critics  are  spending  time  and 
temper  over  these  matters,  the  public  is  reading  the  book, — 
which  is  after  all  more  important. 

As  for  the  one  literary  assumption  underlying  these  vagaries, 
— that  a  writer  must  deal  with  nothing  but  his  or  her  personal 
experience, — it  is  of  course  a  very  respectable  assumption.  All 
that  one  has  to  say  is  that  literature  and  the  public  have  upset 
it  times  without  number.  It  is  tolerably  obvious  that  Sir 
Walter  Scott  could  not  have  personally  observed  the  society 
of  George  II. 's  day,  or  have  lived  familiarly  in  the  society  of 
Louis  XI. ;  which  does  not  prevent  the  '  Heart  of  Midlothian ' 
or  '  Quentin  Durward '  from  being  great  novels.  Another 
truism,  you  say.  Very  well.  At  any  rate  the  successes  of  the 
historical  novel  prove  that  the  imaginative  treatment  of  life 
depends  upon  personal  experience  as  one  of  its  great  factors, 
but  by  no  means  the  only  one.  Personal  experience,  at  least, 
of  the  narrow  and  technical  sort.  Every  novel  that  ever 
touched  a  reader  depends,  of  course,  ultimately  upon  personal 
experience — that  is  to  say,  upon  what  the  writer  is,  and  can 
put  into  the  framework  with  which  experience  or  imagination, 
or  research  if  you  like,  supplies  him.  But  that  is  another 
question. 

To  return,  however,  to  what  are  really  the  '  hanging  matters,' 
with  the  Quarterlies,  and  with  other  people  besides. 

'  The  novel,'  says  a  writer  in  the  '  New  Review,'  '  will  not 


PREFACE  xiii 

bear '  what  the  writer  of  '  David  Grieve '  puts  into  it ;  will  not 
bear,  that  is  to  say,  the  introduction  of  matter  drawn  from 
the  religious  and  philosophical  field.  Naturally  the  proposition 
interests  me.  But  it  rouses  in  me  a  little  amused  wonder  that 
a  critic  with  so  wide  a  knowledge  of  literature  as  Mr.  Traill 
should  imagine  that  the  matter  can  be  settled  quite  so  easily. 
For  as  one  looks  back  over  the  history  of  the  novel  nothing 
seems  to  be  so  clear  as  that  it  has  'borne  '  everything  of  what- 
ever kind  that  a  writer  who  could  make  himself  heard  was 
minded  to  put  into  it.  In  the  days  of  Cervantes  the  novel, 
fish-like,  swallowed  other  novels  whole,  and  the  adventures  of 
the  immortal  knight  came  to  a  standstill  while  the  fortunes 
and  career  of  'El  Curioso  Impertinente '  unrolled.  In  the 
days  of  '  Julie,'  the  cadre  supplied  by  the  loves  of  Saint-Preux 
and  Madame  de  Wolrnar  admitted  of  the  introduction  of  a  vast 
amount  of  material  which  would  make  the  critic  of  to-day  rise 
in  his  wrath — discussions  of  the  opera,  of  the  qualities  of 
women  of  the  world,  of  the  existence  of  God,  of  the  proper 
management  of  children  and  estates,  and  much  else.  The  dis- 
cussions happened  to  be  interesting  then,  and  they  are  in- 
teresting historically  now.  Rousseau  wrote  as  the  spirit  moved 
him,  choosing  out  of  the  variegated  spectacle  of  life  what 
attracted  him,  and  the  instant  response  of  his  generation — in 
spite  of  the  sarcasms  of  Voltaire — showed  that  he  was  right. 
'  Wilhelm  Meister '  wanders,  digresses,  and  preaches  as  Goethe 
pleases,  but  the  man  who  wrote  of  life  and  thought  in  it  had 
lived  and  thought ;  and,  formless  as  it  is,  the  book  has  entered 
into  the  training  of  Europe.  Chateaubriand,  George  Sand,  and 
Victor  Hugo  have  bent  the  novel  to  all  the  purposes  of  pro- 
paganda in  turn.  Theology,  politics,  social  problems  and 
reforms,  they  have  laid  hands  on  them  all,  and  have  but  stirred 
the  more  vibrations  thereby  in  the  life  of  their  time.  And 
which  of  them,  from  '  Don  Quixote  '  downwards,  will  you  save 
from  this  opprobrious  category  of  '  novels  with  a  purpose '  ? — 
which  of  them  has  not  tried  in  its  own  way  and  with  its  own 
vehemence  to  '  reform  the  world,'  whether  it  be  by  throwing  an 
effete  literature  out  of  window,  or  by  holding  up  the  picture  of 
married  virtue  and  religious  faith  beside  that  of  illicit  love  and 
empty  doubt,  or  by  showing  forth  the  wrongs  and  difficulties  of 
women,  or  by  the  passionate  attempt  to  make  the  world  realise 
the  pressure  of  the  pyramid  of  our  civilised  society  on  the  poor 
and  the  weak  at  its  base  ? 

It  is  no  doubt  true,  and  the  fact  is  one  of  great  psychological 


adv  THE  HISTORY    OF   DAVID    GRIEVE 

interest,  that  in  England  the  novel  has  been  specially  .objective, 
positive,  concrete.  Our  novels  since  Fielding  descend  rather 
from  '  Gil  Bias '  and  that  Spanish  picaresque  literature,  the 
refuge  of  a  people  intellectually  starved,  which  became  so 
popular  and  found  so  many  imitators  in  a  seventeenth-  or 
eighteenth-century  England,  than  they  descend  from  '  Euphues ' 
or  'The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia.'  We  have  always 
taken  more  delight  in  the  mere  spectacle  of  life  than  our 
neighbours  ;  '  ideas '  have  on  the  whole,  and  for  good  reasons, 
been  more  distasteful  to  us  than  to  France  or  Germany ;  and 
in  the  novel  of  our  century  we  have  the  splendid  result  of  both 
tendencies,  positive  and  negative.  Still  there  have  been  con- 
siderable exceptions.  If  one  looks  back  over  the  fiction  of  the 
last  fifty  years,  one  comes  again  and  again  upon  books  that 
have  broken  bounds  so  to  speak,  and  that  have  owed  both 
their  motive-power  and  their  success  to  this  desire,  which  the 

*  Quarterly '  finds  so  terrible  and  so  abominable,  of  '  reforming 
the  world,'  or,  as  I  should  put  it,  to  the  expression  of  '  a  criti- 
cism of  life,'  which  may  advance,  whether  in  the  hearts  of  the 
many  or  the  few,  thoughts  and  causes  dear  to  the  writers. 

*  Think  with  me  ! '    '  See  with  me  ! '    '  Let  me  persuade  you  ! ' 
they  seem  to  say,  and  again  and  again  the  world,  or  rather  the 
world  which  belonged  to  the  book,  has  let  itself  be  persuaded, 
gladly. 

Let  us,  indeed,  exchange  the  idea  of  '  purpose '  for  the  idea 
'criticism  of  life,'  and  see  how  the  matter  stands.  'Poetry,' 
said  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  'is  a  criticism  of  life  under  the 
conditions  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic  beauty.'  For  this  dictum 
he  has  been  roughly  handled  by  the  school  which,  in  its  zeal  for 
certain  elements  and  aspects  of  art,  and  under  the  influence  of 
a  narrow  conception  of  criticism,  would,  if  it  could,  divorce  art 
from  criticism  and  claim  for  it  a  divine  and  irresponsible 
isolation.  But,  in  my  belief  at  any  rate,  the  task  is  impossible. 
Criticism  lurks,  and  will  always  lurk,  in  the  very  holiest  and 
secretest  places  of  art.  For  the  artist  there  is  always  the  choice 
between  this  and  that,  between  good  and  better,  between  the 
congruous  and  the  discordant,  between  one  sequence  and 
another.  Every  act  of  literary  conception  is  half  creative,  half 
critical,  and  could  not  be  creative  without  being  critical. 

Alter  two  words,  then,  in  Mr.  Arnold's  definition  of  poetry, 
and  watch  how  it  applies  to  the  novel.  '  A  criticism  of  life 
under  tJie  conditions  of  imaginative  truth  and  imaginative 
beauty.'  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  definition  so  drawn  sweeps  into 


PREFACE  XV 

its  net  all  the  remembered  novel-writing  of  the  century.  For 
even  Miss  Austen — that  most  detached  and  impersonal  of  all 
the  great  story-tellers — has  her  '  criticism  of  life '  and  makes  it 
felt.  With  what  glee  and  malice  does  she  hold  up  to  us  the 
absurdities  of  aristocratic  pride  in  Darcy  and  in  Lady  Catherine 
de  Burgh,  and  how  large  she  writes  the  lesson  of  Emma's 
patronising  and  meddlesome  conceit !  As  for  Scott,  Thackeray, 
Dickens,  Charlotte  Bronte,  compare  the  'criticism  of  life'  in- 
volved in  the  work  of  any  one  of  them  with  that  involved  in 
the  work  of  any  conspicuous  French  novelist,  of  George  Sand, 
or  Theophile  Gautier,  or  Octave  Feuillet,  and  the  contrasts  of 
nationality  will  make  you  realise  at  once  that  each  of  these 
writers,  however  objective  and  positive  he  may  seem,  has  all 
the  while  an  ethical  and  social  ideal  which  he  is  trying  to  make 
prevail.  Each  delights,  as  every  artist  should  and  does  delight, 
in  the  mere  play  of  the  imaginative  gift ;  but  through  each 
and  all  throbs  the  wish  'to  reform  the  world'  in  his  or  her 
measure.  The  question  is,  can  you  have  lasting  imaginative 
work  without  it  ? 

Well,  but — you  will  perhaps  say  to  me  with  impatience— this 
is  all  trite  and  familiar  enough.  What  you  call  'criticism  of 
life'  other  people  call  'individuality,'  and  very  few  dream  of 
denying  that  the  novel  or  the  poem  should  have  individuality 
— should  embody  a  '  criticism  of  life '  up  to  this  point.  The 
question  is  :  How  far  is  the  criticism  to  be  carried  ? 

Ah  !  that  is  indeed  the  question,  the  whole  question.  All 
that  one  can  say  is  there  have  always  been  two  answers — the 
answer  of  those  who  wish  to  make  of  art  a  protection  against 
life,  and  the  answer  of  those  who  attempt  to  use  it  as  the  torch 
for  exploring  life.  Do  not  attempt  to  carry  your  criticism,  say 
the  first,  beyond  the  point  of  common  experience,  above  all  of 
common  agreement.  The  world  is  rich  enough  within  these 
limits  ;  it  will  give  you  amply  within  them  the  wherewithal  to 
laugh  or  cry,  or  wonder ;  for  heaven's  sake  be  content !  and 
join  with  us  in  making  of  fiction  and  poetry  an  ark  of  refuge,  a 
many-coloured  shrine  for  the  common  perennial  passions  and 
emotions  and  delights  of  mankind,  reared  amid  the  clash  of 
irreconcilable  interests,  and  that  surrounding  darkness  of  the 
Unknown  which  neither  philosophy  nor  religion,  say  what  you 
will,  can  clear  away. 

A  beguiling  answer  ! — and  what  magicians  it  has  called  into 
its  service  !  It  was  the  creed  of  Scott  and  Miss  Austen  ;  in 
words  at  least  of  George  Eliot ;  it  is  implied  in  the  golden  art 


xvi  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID    GRIEVE 

of  Mr.  Stevenson.  We  have  all  felt  the  charm  and  the  per- 
suasiveness of  it ;  and  in  certain  moods  of  life  there  is  not  a 
single  man  or  woman  that  has  not  wished  it,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  to  prevail. 

But  there  is  another  answer, — and  it  is  equally  legitimate. 
'  Nay,  let  us  have  no  lines,  no  exclusions  ! '  it  says.  '  Life 
divided  into  sections  is  life  shorn  of  some  of  its  fulness.  There 
are  no  hard  and  fast  limits  in  reality ;  the  great  speculative 
motives  everywhere  play  and  melt  into  the  great  practical 
motives ;  each  different  life  implies  a  different  and  a  various 
thought-stuff;  and  there  is  nothing  in  art  to  forbid  your  deal- 
ing— if  you  can  ! — with  the  thought-stuff  of  the  philosopher  as 
freely  as  with  the  thought-stuff  of  the  peasant  or  the  maiden. 
Still  less  is  there  any  artistic  reason  why  in  picturing  the  indi- 
vidual human  existence  you  should  feel  yourself  bound  to  cut 
away  from  it  anything  that  really  is  there.  Either  way,  let 
there  be  no  parti  i>ris.  If  we,  in  our  zeal  to  include  ideas  among 
the  material  of  imaginative  presentation,  make  the  mistake  of 
supposing  that  ideas  are  the  whole  of  life,  our  work  will  come 
to  nothing  ;  and  if  you,  in  your  zeal  to  escape  the  ideas  which 
torture  and  divide,  or  those  which  present  special  difficulties 
to  the  artist,  tend  to  empty  your  work  of  ideas  beyond  a  certain 
point,  it  also  will  come  to  nothing.  Each  form  of  life -reading 
has  its  dangers.  Success  in  ours  is  rarer  ;  permanence  less 
likely ;  the  dangers  more  obvious  than  in  yours.  But  the 
attempt  is  inevitable,  and  if  we  fail,  we  fail ! ' 

The  voices  of  Rousseau,  of  George  Sand,  of  Goethe,  are  in 
this  last  answer.  And  as  for  me,  shrinking  under  the  onslaught 
of  the  Quarterlies,  may  I  still  be  proud  to  count  myself — how- 
ever feeble,  however  weak— among  that  company  1  I  am  so 
made  that  I  cannot  picture  a  human  being's  development 
without  wanting  to  know  the  whole,  his  religion  as  well  as  his 
business,  his  thoughts  as  well  as  his  actions.  I  cannot  try  to 
reflect  my  time  without  taking  account  of  forces  which  are  at 
least  as  real  and  living  as  any  other  forces,  and  have  at  least 
as  much  to  do  with  the  drama  of  human  existence  about  me. 
'The  two  great  forming  agencies  of  the  world's  history  have 
been  the  religious  and  the  economic,'  says  Professor  Marshall. 
Every  one  will  agree  that  in  his  own  way  the  novelist  may 
handle  the  '  economic.'  By  and  by  we  shall  all  agree  that  in 
his  own  way  he  may  handle  the  '  religious.'  For  every  artist 
of  whatever  type  there  is  one  inexorable  law.  ^  our  '  criticism 
of  life'  must  be  fashioned  under  the  conditions  of  imaginative 


PREFACE  xvii 

truth  and  imaginative  beauty.  If  you,  being  a  novelist,  make 
a  dull  story,  not  all  the  religious  argument  in  the  world  will  or 
should  save  you.  For  your  business  is  to  make  a  novel,  not  a 
pamphlet,  a  reflection  of  human  life,  and  not  merely  a  record  of 
intellectual  conception.  But  under  these  conditions  every- 
thing is  open — try  what  you  will — and  the  response  of  your 
fellows,  and  that  only,  will  decide  your  success. 

Ah !  that  response — how  dear  it  is  to  us  !  Now  as  I  am 
about  to  launch  this  second  book  into  that  wider  public  beyond 
the  circulating  libraries  to  which  the  ultimate  appeal  lies,  as  I 
launched  '  Robert  Elsmere  '  four  years  ago,  my  mind  passes  back 
over  these  years — over  their  hopes  and  emotions  and  surprises, 
their  delights  and  their  toils.  I  think  of  the  many  thousand 
persons  to  whom  in  that  space  of  time  I  have  become  known  ; 
of  whom  in  the  pauses  of  work  I  inevitably  think,  with 
alternate  yearning  and  dread.  I  remember  that  wave  of 
sympathy  which  lifted  '  Robert  Elsmere '  ;  I  feel  it  still  swelling 
about  me,  waiting,  I  trust,  for  this  new  book,  to  carry  it  also 
into  prosperous  seas.  I  should  be  ungrateful  indeed  were  I 
to  show  much  soreness  under  criticism,  however  hostile,  how- 
ever, as  I  think,  unjust.  For  the  world  to  which  they  were 
addressed  has  sent  out  kind  and  welcoming  hands  to  these 
books  of  mine  ;  I  have  in  my  ears  the  sound  of  words  that  may 
well  stir  and  quicken  and  encourage  ;  and  in  my  heart  the 
longing  to  keep  the  sympathy  gained,  and  the  ambition  to 
deserve  it  more  and  more. 

Yours  always  sincerely, 

MARY  A.  WARD. 


BOOK  I 
CHILDHOOD 


CHAPTER  I 

'  TAK  your  hat,  Louie  !    Yo're  allus  leavin  summat  behind  yer. ' 

'  David,  yo  go  for  't,'  said  the  child  addressed  to  a  boy  by  her 
side,  nodding  her  head  insolently  towards  the  speaker,  a  tall 
and  bony  woman,  who  stood  on  the  steps  the  children  had  just 
descended,  holding  out  a  battered  hat. 

'  Yo're  a  careless  thing,  Louie,'  said  the  boy,  but  he  went  back 
and  took  the  hat. 

'  Mak  her  tie  it,'  said  the  woman,  showing  an  antiquated  pair  of 
strings.  'If  she  loses  it  she  needna  coom  cryin  for  anudder. 
She'd  lose  her  yead  if  it  wor  loose. ' 

Then  she  turned  and  went  back  into  the  house.  It  was  a 
smallish  house  of  grey  stone,  three  windows  above,  two  and  a  door 
below.  Dashes  of  white  on  the  stone  gave,  as  it  were,  eyebrows 
to  the  windows,  and  over  the  door  there  was  a  meagre  trellised 
porch,  up  which  grew  some  now  leafless  roses  and  honeysuckles. 
To  the  left  of  the  door  a  scanty  bit  of  garden  was  squeezed  in 
between  the  hill,  against  which  the  house  was  set  edgeways,  and 
the  rest  of  the  flat  space,  occupied  by  the  uneven  farmyard,  the 
cart-shed  and  stable,  the  cow-houses  and  duck -pond.  This  garden 
contained  two  shabby  apple  trees,  as  yet  hardly  touched  by  the 
spring;  some  currant  and  gooseberry  bushes,  already  fairly  green; 
and  a  clump  or  two  of  scattered  daffodils  and  wallflowers.  The 
hedge  round  it  was  broken  through  in  various  places,  and  it  had 
a  casual  neglected  air. 

The  children  went  their  way  through  the  yard.  In  front  of 
them  a  flock  of  some  forty  sheep  and  lambs  pushed  along,  guarded 
by  two  black  short-haired  collies.  The  boy,  brandishing  a  long 
stick,  opened  a  gate  deplorably  in  want  of  mending,  and  the  sheep 
crowded  through,  keenly  looked  after  by  the  dogs,  who  waited 
meanwhile  on  their  flanks  with  heads  up,  ears  cocked,  and  that 
air  of  self -restrained  energy  which  often  makes  a  sheep-dog  more 
human  than  his  master.  The  field  beyond  led  to  a  little  larch  plan- 
tation, where  a  few  primroses  showed  among  the  tufts  of  long,  rich 
grass,  and  the  drifts  of  last  year's  leaves.  Here  the  flock  scat- 
tered a  little,  but  David  and  the  dogs  were  after  them  in  a  twink- 
ling, and  the  plantation  gate  was  soon  closed  on  the  last  bleating 
mother.  Then  there  was  nothing  more  for  the  boy  to  do  than  to 
go  up  to  the  top  of  the  green  rising  ground  on  which  the  farm 
stood  and  see  if  the  gate  leading  to  the  moor  was  safely  shut. 


4  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I. 

For  the  sheep  he  had  been  driving  were  not  meant  for  the  open 
moorland.  Their  feeding  grounds  lay  in  the  stone-walled  fields 
round  the  homestead,  and  had  they  strayed  on  to  the  mountain 
beyond,  which  was  reserved  for  a  hardier  Scotch  breed,  David 
would  have  been  answerable.  So  he  strode,  whistling,  up  the  hill 
to  have  a  look  at  that  top  gate,  while  Louie  sauntered  down  to 
the  stream  which  ran  round  the  lower  pastures  to  wait  for  him. 

The  top  gate  was  fast,  but  David  climbed  the  wall  and  stood 
there  a  while,  hands  in  his  pockets,  legs  apart,  whistling  and 
looking. 

'They  can't  see  t' Downfall  from  Stockport  to-day,'  he  was 
saying  to  himself;  '  it's  coomin  ower  like  mad.' 

Some  distance  away  in  front  of  him,  beyond  the  undulating 
heather  ground  at  his  feet,  rose  a  magnificent  curving  front  of 
moor,  the  steep  sides  of  it  crowned  with  black  edges  and  cliffs  of 
grit,  the  outline  of  the  south-western  end  sweeping  finely  up  on 
the  right  to  a  purple  peak,  the  king  of  all  the  moorland  round. 
No  such  colour  as  clothed  that  bronzed  and  reddish  wall  of  rock, 
heather,  and  bilberry  is  known  to  Westmoreland,  hardly  to  Scot- 
land; it  seems  to  be  the  peculiar  property  of  that  lonely  and 
inaccessible  district  which  marks  the  mountainous  centre  of  mid- 
England — the  district  of  Kinder  Scout  and  the  High  Peak.  Before 
the  boy's  ranging  eye  spread  the  whole  western  rampart  of  the 
Peak — to  the  right,  the  highest  point,  of  Kinder  Low,  to  the  left, 
'  edge '  behind  '  edge,'  till  the  central  rocky  mass  sank  and  faded 
towards  the  north  into  milder  forms  of  green  and  undulating 
hills.  In  the  very  centre  of  the  great  curve  a  white  and  surging 
mass  of  water  cleft  the  mountain  from  top  to  bottom,  falling 
straight  over  the  edge,  here  some  two  thousand  feet  above  the 
sea,  and  roaring  downward  along  an  almost  precipitous  bed  into 
the  stream — the  Kinder — which  swept  round  the  hill  on  which 
the  boy  was  standing,  and  through  the  valley  behind  him.  In 
ordinary  times  the  'Downfall,'  as  the  natives  call  it,  only  makes 
itself  visible  on  the  mountain-side  as  a  black  ravine  of  tossed  and 
tumbled  rocks.  But  there  had  been  a  late  snowfall  on  the  high 
plateau  beyond,  followed  by  heavy  rain,  and  the  swollen  stream 
was  to-day  worthy  of  its  grand  setting  of  cliff  and  moor.  On 
such  occasions  it  becomes  a  landmark  for  all  the  country  round, 
for  the  cotton-spinning  centres  of  New  Mills  and  Stockport,  as 
well  as  for  the  grey  and  scattered  farms  which  climb  the  long 
backs  of  moorland  lying  between  the  Peak  and  the  Cheshire 
border. 

To-day,  also,  after  the  snow  and  rains  of  early  April,  the  air 
was  clear  again.  The  sun  was  shining;  a  cold,  dry  wind  was 
blowing;  there  were  sounds  of  spring  in  the  air,  and  signs  of  it 
on  the  thorns  and  larches.  Far  away  on  the  boundary  wall  of 
the  farmland  a  cuckoo  was  sitting,  his  long  tail  swinging  behind 
him,  his  monotonous  note  filling  the  valley;  and  overhead  a 
couple  of  peewits  chased  each  other  in  the  pale,  windy  blue. 

The  keen  air,  the  sun  after  the  rain,  sent  life  and  exhilaration 


CHAP.  I.  CHILDHOOD  5 

through  the  boy's  young  limbs.  He  leapt  from  the  wall,  and  raced 
back  down  the  field,  his  dogs  streaming  behind  him,  the  sheep, 
with  their  newly  dropped  lambs,  shrinking  timidly  to  either  side 
as  he  passed.  He  made  for  a  corner  in  the  wall,  vaulted  it  on  to 
the  moor,  crossed  a  rough  dam  built  in  the  stream  for  sheep- 
washing  purposes,  jumped  in  and  out  of  the  two  grey-walled 
sheep-pens  beyond,  and  then  made  leisurely  for  a  spot  in  the 
brook — not  the  Downfall  stream,  but  the  Red  Brook,  one  of  its 
westerly  affluents — where  he  had  left  a  miniature  water-wheel 
at  work  the  day  before.  Before  him  and  around  him  spread 
the  brown  bosom  of  Kinder  Scout;  the  cultivated  land  was  left 
behind;  here  on  all  sides,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see,  was  the 
wild  home  of  heather  and  plashing  water,  of  grouse  and  peewit, 
of  cloud  and  breeze. 

The  little  wheel,  shaped  from  a  block  of  firwood,  was  turning 
merrily  under  a  jet  of  water  carefully  conducted  to  it  from  a 
neighbouring  fall.  David  went  down  on  hands  and  knees  to 
examine  it.  He  made  some  little  alteration  in  the  primitive 
machinery  of  it,  his  fingers  touching  it  lightly  and  neatly,  and 
then,  delighted  with  the  success  of  it,  he  called  Louie  to  come 
and  look. 

Louie  was  sitting  a  few  yards  further  up  the  stream,  crooning 
to  herself  as  she  swung  to  and  fro,  and  snatching  every  now  and 
then  at  some  tufts  of  primroses  growing  near  her,  which  she 
wrenched  away  with  a  hasty,  wasteful  hand,  careless,  apparently, 
whether  they  reached  her  lap  or  merely  strewed  the  turf  about 
her  with  their  torn  blossoms.  When  David  called  her  she  gath- 
ered up  the  flowers  anyhow  in  her  apron,  and  dawdled  towards 
him,  leaving  a  trail  of  them  behind  her.  As  she  reached  him, 
however,  she  was  struck  by  a  book  sticking  out  of  his  pocket,  and, 
stooping  over  him,  with  a  sudden  hawk-like  gesture,  as  he 
sprawled  head  downwards,  she  tried  to  get  hold  of  it. 

But  he  felt  her  movement.  '  Let  goo  ! '  he  said  imperiously, 
and,  throwing  himself  round,  while  one  foot  slipped  into  the 
water,  he  caught  her  hand,  with  its  thin  predatory  fingers,  and 
pulled  the  book  away. 

'  Yo  just  leave  my  books  alone,  Louie.  Yo  do  'em  a  mischeef 
whaniver  yo  can — an  I'll  not  have  it.' 

He  turned  his  handsome,  regular  face,  crimsoned  by  his  posi- 
tion and  splashed  by  the  water,  towards  her  with  an  indignant 
air.  She  laughed,  and  sat  herself  down  again  on  the  grass, 
looking  a  very  imp  of  provocation. 

'They're  stupid,'  she  said,  shortly.  'Theymak  yo  a  stupid 
gonner  ony  ways. ' 

'  Oh  I  do  they  ? '  he  retorted,  angrily.  '  Bit  I'll  be  even  wi  yo. 
I'll  tell  yo  noa  moor  stories  out  of  'em,  not  if  yo  ast  iver  so.' 

The  girl's  mouth  curled  contemptuously,  and  she  began  to 
gather  her  primroses  into  a  bunch  with  an  air  of  the  utmost  se- 
renity. She  was  a  thin,  agile,  lightly  made  creature,  apparently 
about  eleven.  Her  piercing  black  eyes,  when  they  lifted,  seemed 


6  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

to  overweight  the  face,  whereof  the  other  features  were  at  present 
small  and  pinched.  The  mouth  had  a  trick  of  remaining  slightly 
open,  showing  a  line  of  small  pearly  teeth;  the  chin  was  a  little 
sharp  and  shrewish.  As  for  the  hair,  it  promised  to  be  splendid; 
at  present  it  was  an  unkempt,  tangled  mass,  which  Hannah 
Grieve,  the  children's  aunt,  for  her  own  credit's  sake  at  chapel,  or 
in  the  public  street,  made  occasional  violent  attempts  to  reduce  to 
order — to  very  little  purpose,  so  strong  and  stubborn  was  the  curl 
of  it.  The  whole  figure  was  out  of  keeping  with  the  English 
moorside,  with  the  sheep,  and  the  primroses. 

But  so  indeed  was  that  of  the  boy,  whose  dark  colouring  was 
more  vivacious  and  pronounced  than  his  sister's,  because  the  red 
of  his  cheek  and  lip  was  deeper,  while  his  features,  though  larger 
than  hers,  were  more  finely  regular,  and  his  eyes  had  the  same 
piercing  blackness,  the  same  all-examining  keenness,  as  hers. 
The  yellowish  tones  of'  his  worn  fustian  suit  and  a  red  Tam-o'- 
Shanter  cap  completed  the  general  effect  of  brilliancy  and,  as  it 
were,  foreignness. 

Having  finished  his  inspection  of  his  water-mill,  he  scrambled 
across  to  the  other  side  of  the  stream  so  as  to  be  well  out  of  his 
sister's  way,  and,  taking  out  the  volume  which  was  stretching  his 
pocket,  he  began  to  read  it.  It  was  a  brown  calf -bound  book, 
much  worn,  and  on  its  title-page  it  bore  the  title  of  '  The  Wars  of 
Jerusalem,'  of  Flavius  Josephus,  translated  by  S.  Calmet,  and  a 
date  somewhere  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  To 
this  antique  fare  the  boy  settled  himself  down.  The  two  collies 
lay  couched  beside  him;  a  stone-chat  perched  on  one  or  other  of 
the  great  blocks  which  lay  scattered  over  the  heath  gave  out  his 
clinking  note;  while  every  now  and  then  the  loud  peevish  cluck 
of  the  grouse  came  from  the  distant  sides  of  the  Scout. 

Titus  was  now  making  his  final  assault  on  the  Temple.  The 
Zealots  were  gathered  in  the  innermost  court,  frantically  beseech- 
ing Heaven  for  a  sign;  the  walls,  the  outer  approaches  of  the 
Sanctuary  were  choked  with  the  dying  and  the  dead.  David  sat 
absorbed,  elbows  on  knees,  his  face  framed  in  his  hands.  Sud- 
denly the  descent  of  something  cold  and  clammy  on  his  bent  neck 
roused  him  with  a  most  unpleasant  shock. 

Quick  as  lightning  he  faced  round,  snatching  at  his  assailant; 
but  Louie  was  oft ,  scudding  among  the  bilberry  hillocks  with  peals 
of  laughter,  while  the  slimy  moss  she  had  just  gathered  from  the 
edges  of  the  brook  sent  cold  creeping  streams  into  the  recesses  of 
David's  neck  and  shoulders.  He  shook  himself  free  of  the  mess 
as  best  he  could,  and  rushed  after  her.  For  a  long  time  he  chased 
her  in  vain,  then  her  foot  tripped,  and  he  came  up  with  her  just 
as  she  rolled  into  the  heather,  gathered  up  like  a  hedgehog  against 
attack,  her  old  hat  held  down  over  her  ears  and  face.  David  fell 
upon  her  and  chastised  her;  but  his  fisticuffs  probably  looked 
more  formidable  than  they  felt,  for  Louie  laughed  provokingly  all 
the  time,  and  when  he  stopped  out  of  breath  she  said  exultantly, 
as  she  sprang  up,  holding  her  skirts  round  her  ready  for  another 


CHAP.  I  CHILDHOOD  7 

flight,  '  It's  greened  aw  yur  neck  and  yur  collar — luvely  !  Doan't 
yo  be  nassty  for  nothink  next  time  ! ' 

And  off  she  ran. 

'  If  yo  meddle  wi  me  ony  moor,'  he  shouted  after  her  fiercely, 
'  yo  see  what  I'll  do  ! ' 

But  in  reality  the  male  was  helpless,  as  usual.  He  went  rue- 
fully down  to  the  brook,  and  loosening  his  shirt  and  coat  tried  to 
clean  his  neck  and  hair.  Then,  extremely  sticky  and  uncomfort- 
able, he  went  back  to  his  seat  and  his  book,  his  wrathful  eyes 
taking  careful  note  meanwhile  of  Louie's  whereabouts.  And 
thenceforward  he  read,  as  it  were,  on  guard,  looking  up  every 
other  minute. 

Louie  established  herself  some  way  up  the  further  slope,  in  a 
steep  stony  nook,  under  two  black  boulders,  which  protected  her 
rear  in  case  of  reprisals  from  David.  Time  passed  away.  David, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  brook,  revelling  in  the  joys  of  battle,  and 
all  the  more  alive  to  them  perhaps  because  of  the  watch  kept  on 
Louie  by  one  section  of  his  brain,  was  conscious  of  no  length  in 
the  minutes.  But  Louie's  mood  gradually  became  one  of  extreme 
flatness.  All  her  resources  were  for  the  moment  at  an  end.  She 
could  think  of  no  fresh  torment  for  David;  besides,  she  knew 
that  she  was  observed.  She  had  destroyed  all  the  scanty  store  of 
primroses  along  the  brook;  gathered  rushes,  begun  to  plait  them, 
and  thrown  them  away;  she  had  found  a  grouse's  nest  among  the 
dead  fern,  and,  contrary  to  the  most  solemn  injunctions  of  uncle 
and  keeper,  enforced  by  the  direst  threats,  had  purloined  and 
broken  an  egg;  and  still  dinner-time  delayed.  Perhaps,  too,  the 
cold  blighting  wind,  which  soon  made  her  look  blue  and  pinched, 
tamed  her  insensibly.  At  any  rate,  she  got  up  after  about  an 
hour,  and  coolly  walked  across  to  David. 

He  looked  up  at  her  with  a  quick  frown.  But  she  sat  down, 
and,  clasping  her  hands  round  her  knees,  while  the  primroses  she 
had  stuck  in  her  hat  dangled  over  her  defiant  eyes,  she  looked  at 
him  with  a  grinning  composure. 

'  Yo  can  read  out  if  yo  want  to,'  she  remarked. 

'  Yo  doan't  deserve  nowt,  an  I  shan't,'  said  David,  shortly. 

'  Then  I'll  tell  Aunt  Hannah  about  how  yo  let  t'  lambs  stray 
lasst  evenin,  and  about  yor  readin  at  neet.' 

'  Yo  may  tell  her  aw  t'  tallydiddles  yo  can  think  on,'  was  the 
unpromising  reply. 

Louie  threw  all  the  scorn  possible  into  her  forced  smile,  and 
then,  dropping  full-length  into  the  heather,  she  began  to  sing  at 
the  top  of  a  shrill,  unpleasing  voice,  mainly,  of  course,  for  the  sake 
of  harrying  anyone  in  her  neighbourhood  who  might  wish  to  read. 

'  Stop  that  squealin! '  David  commanded,  peremptorily.  Where- 
upon Louie  sang  louder  than  before. 

David  looked  round  in  a  fury,  but  his  fury  was,  apparently, 
instantly  damped  by  the  inward  conviction,  born  of  long  expe- 
rience, that  he  could  do  nothing  to  help  himself.  He  sprang  up, 
and  thrust  his  book  into  his  pocket. 


8  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

Nobpry  ull  mak  owt  o'  yo  till  yo  get  a  bastin  twice  a  day,  wi 
an  odd  lick  extra  for  Sundays,'  he  remarked  to  her  with  grim  em- 
phasis when  he  had  reached  what  seemed  to  him  a  safe  distance. 
Then  he  turned  and  strode  up  the  face  of  the  hill,  the  dogs  at  his 
heels.  Louie  turned  on  her  elbow,  and  threw  such  smaU  stones 
as  she  could  discover  among  the  heather  after  him,  but  they  fell 
harmlessly  about  him,  and  did  not  answer  their  purpose  of  pro- 
voking him  to  turn  round  again. 

She  observed  that  he  was  going  up  to  the  old  smithy  on  the 
side  of  Kinder  Low,  and  in  a  few  minutes  she  got  up  and  saun- 
tered lazily  after  him. 

'  T'  owd  smithy '  had  been  the  enchanted  ground  of  David's 
childhood.  It  was  a  ruined  building  standing  deep  in  heather, 
half-way  up  the  mountain-side,  and  ringed  by  scattered  blocks 
and  tabular  slabs  of  grit.  Here  in  times  far  remote — beyond  the 
memory  of  even  the  oldest  inhabitant — the  millstones  of  the  dis- 
trict, which  gave  their  name  to  the  '  millstone  grit '  formation  of 
the  Peak,  were  fashioned.  High  up  on  the  dark  moorside  stood 
what  remained  of  the  primitive  workshop.  The  fire-marked 
stones  of  the  hearth  were  plainly  visible;  deep  in  the  heather  near 
lay  the  broken  jambs  of  the  window;  a  stone  doorway  with  its 
lintel  was  still  standing;  and  on  the  slope  beneath  it,  hardly  to  be 
distinguished  now  from  the  great  primaeval  blocks  out  of  which 
they  had  sprung  and  to  which  they  were  fast  returning,  reposed 
two  or  three  huge  millstones.  Perhaps  they  bordered  some 
ancient  track,  climbed  by  the  millers  of  the  past  when  they  came 
to  this  remote  spot  to  give  their  orders;  but,  if  so,  the  track  had 
long  since  sunk  out  of  sight  in  the  heather,  and  no  visible  link 
remained  to  connect  the  history  of  this  high  and  lonely  place  with 
that  of  those  teeming  valleys  hidden  to  west  and  north  among  the 
moors,  the  dwellers  wherein  must  once  have  known  it  well. 
From  the  old  threshold  the  eye  commanded  a  wilderness  of  moors, 
rising  wave-like  one  after  another,  from  the  green  swell  just 
below  whereon  stood  Reuben  Grieve's  farm,  to  the  far-distant 
Alderley  Edge.  In  the  hollows  between,  dim  tall  chimneys  veiled 
in  mist  and  smoke  showed  the  places  of  the  cotton  towns — of  Hay- 
field,  New  Mills,  Staleybridge,  Stockport;  while  in  the  far  north- 
west, any  gazer  to  whom  the  country-side  spoke  familiarly  might, 
in  any  ordinary  clearness  of  weather,  look  for  and  find  the  eternal 
smoke-cloud  of  Manchester. 

So  the  deserted  smithy  stood  as  it  were  spectator  for  ever  of 
that  younger,  busier  England  which  wanted  it  no  more.  Human 
life  notwithstanding  had  left  on  it  some  very  recent  traces.  On 
the  lintel  of  the  ruined  door  two  names  were  scratched  deep  into 
the  whitish  under-grain  of  the  black  weather-beaten  grit.  The 
upper  one  ran:  '  David  Suveret  Grieve,  Sept.  15,  1863;'  the  lower, 
'  Louise  Stephanie  Grieve,  Sept.  15,  1863.'  They  were  written 
in  bold  round-hand,  and  could  be  read  at  a  considerable  dis- 
tance. During  the  nine  months  they  had  been  there,  many 
a  rustic  passer-by  had  been  stopped  by  them,  especially  by  the 


CHAP,  ii  CHILDHOOD  9 

oddity  of  the  name  Suveret,  which  tormented  the  Derbyshire 
mouth. 

In  a  corner  of  the  walls  stood  something  more  puzzling  still — a 
large  iron  pan,  filled  to  the  brim  with  water,  and  firmly  bedded  on 
a  foundation  of  earth  and  stones.  So  still  in  general  was  the  shin- 
ing sheltered  round,  that  the  branches  of  the  mountain  ash  which 
leant  against  the  crumbling  wall,  the  tufts  of  hard  fern  growing 
among  the  stones,  the  clouds  which  sailed  overhead,  were  all 
delicately  mirrored  in  it.  That  pan  was  David  Grieve's  dearest 
possession,  and  those  reflections,  so  magical,  and  so  alive,  had 
contrived  for  him  many  a  half -hour  of  almost  breathless  pleasure. 
He  had  carried  it  off  from  the  refuse-yard  of  a  foundry  in  the 
valley,  where  he  had  a  friend  in  one  of  the  apprentices.  The  farm 
donkey  and  himself  had  dragged  it  thither  on  a  certain  never-to- 
be-forgotten  day,  when  Uncle  Reuben  had  been  on  the  other  side 
of  the  mountain  at  a  shepherds'  meeting  in  the  Woodlands,  while 
Aunt  Hannah  was  safely  up  to  her  elbows  in  the  washtub.  Boy's 
back  and  donkey's  back  had  nearly  broken  under  the  task,  but 
there  the  pan  stood  at  last,  the  delight  of  David's  heart.  In  a 
crevice  of  the  wall  beside  it,  hidden  jealously  from  the  passer-by, 
lay  the  other  half  of  that  perpetual  entertainment  it  provided — a 
store  of  tiny  boats  fashioned  by  David,  and  another  friend,  the 
lame  minister  of  the  '  Christian  Brethren  '  congregation  at  Clough 
End,  the  small  factory  town  just  below  Kinder,  who  was  a  sea- 
captain's  son,  and  with  a  knife  and  a  bit  of  deal  could  fashion  you 
any  craft  you  pleased.  These  boats  David  only  brought  out  on 
rare  occasions,  very  seldom  admitting  Louie  to  the  show.  But 
when  he  pleased  they  became  fleets,  and  sailed  for  new  continents. 
Here  were  the  ships  of  Captain  Cook,  there  the  ships  of  Columbus. 
On  one  side  of  the  pan  lay  the  Spanish  main,  on  the  other  the 
islands  of  the  South  Seas.  A  certain  tattered  copy  of  the  '  Royal 
Magazine,'  with  pictures,  which  lay  in  Uncle  Reuben's  cupboard 
at  home,  provided  all  that  for  David  was  to  be  known  of  these 
names  and  places.  But  fancy  played  pilot  and  led  the  way;  she 
conjured  up  storms  and  islands  and  adventures;  and  as  he  hung 
over  his  pan  high  on  the  Derbyshire  moor,  the  boy,  like  Sidney  of 
old,  '  sailed  the  seas  where  there  was  never  sand ' — the  vast  and 
viewless  oceans  of  romance. 

CHAPTER  II 

ONCE  safe  in  the  smithy,  David  recovered  his  temper.  If  Louie 
followed  him,  which  was  probable,  he  would  know' better  how  to 
deal  with  her  here,  with  a  wall  at  his  back  and  a  definite  area  to 
defend,  than  he  did  in  the  treacherous  openness  of  the  heath. 
However,  just  as  he  was  settling  himself  down,  with  a  sigh  of 
relief,  between  the  pan  and  the  wall,  he  caught  sight  of  something 
through  one  of  the  gaps  of  the  old  ruin  which  made  him  fling 
down  his  book  and  run  to  the  doorway.  There,  putting  his 
fingers  to  his  mouth,  he  blew  a  shrill  whistle  along  the  side  of 


10  THE  HISTORY  OF   DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

the  Scout.  A  bent  figure  on  a  distant  path  stopped  at  the  sound. 
It  was  an  old  man,  with  a  plaid  hanging  from  his  shoulders. 
He  raised  the  stick  he  held,  and  shook  it  in  recognition  of  Da- 
vid's signal.  Then  resuming  his  bowed  walk,  he  came  slowly  on, 
followed  by  an  old  hound,  whose  gait  seemed  as  feeble  as  his 
master's. 

David  leant  against  the  doorway  waiting.  Louie,  meanwhile, 
was  lounging  in  the  heather  just  below  him,  having  very  soon 
caught  him  up. 

'  What  d'  yo  want  'im  for  ? '  she  asked  contemptuously,  as  the 
new-comer  approached:  '  he'd  owt  to  be  in  th'  sylum.  Aunt 
Hannah  says  he's  gone  that  silly,  he  owt  to  be  took  up.' 

'Well,  he  woan't  be,  then,'  retorted  David.  'Theer's  nobory 
about  as  ull  lay  a  finger  on  'im.  He  doan't  do  her  no  harm,  nor  yo 
noather.  Women  foak  and  gells  allus  want  to  be  wooryin  soomthin. ' 

'Aunt  Hannah  says  he  lost  his  wits  wi  fuddlin,'  repeated 
Louie  shrilly,  striking  straighter  still  for  what  she  knew  to  be 
one  of  David's  tenderest  points — his  friendship  for  '  owd  'Lias 
Dawson,'  the  queer  dreamer,  who,  fifteen  years  before,  had  been 
the  schoolmaster  of  Frimley  Moor  End,  and  in  local  esteem  '  t' 
cliverest  mon  abeawt  t'  Peak.' 

David  with  difficulty  controlled  a  hot  inclination  to  fall  upon 
his  sister  once  more.  Instead,  however,  he  affected  not  to  hear 
her,  and  shouted  a  loud  '  Good  mornin  '  to  the  old  man,  who  was 
toiling  up  the  knoll  on  which  the  smithy  stood. 

'Lias  responded  feebly,  panting  hard  the  while.  He  sank 
down  on  a  stone  outside  the  smithy,  and  for  a  while  had  neither 
breath  nor  voice.  Then  he  began  to  look  about  him ;  his  heaving 
chest  subsided,  and  there  was  a  rekindling  of  the  strange  blue 
eyes.  He  wore  a  high  white  stock  and  neckcloth;  his  plaid  hung 
round  his  emaciated  shoulders  with  a  certain  antique  dignity;  his 
rusty  wideawake  covered  hair  still  abundant  and  even  curly,  but 
snow-white;  the  face,  with  its  white  eyebrows,  was  long,  thin, 
and  full  of  an  ascetic  delicacy. 

'  Wai,  Davy,  my  lad,'  the  old  man  said  at  last,  with  a  sort  of 
pompous  mildness;  '  I  winna  blame  yo  for  't,  but  yo  interrupted 
me  sadly  wi  yur  whistlin.  I  ha  been  occupied  this  day  wi  busi- 
ness o'  gr&ai  importance.  His  Majesty  King  Charles  has  been 
wi  me  since  seven  o'clock  this  mornin.  And  for  th'  fust  time  I 
ha  been  gettin  reet  to  th'  bottom  o'  things  wi  him.  I  ha  been 
probin  him,  Davy — probin  him.  He  couldno  riddle  througli  wi 
lees;  I  kept  him  to  't,  as  yo  mun  keep  a  horse  to  a  jump — straight 
an  tight.  I  had  it  aw  out  about  Strafford,  an  t'  Five  Members, 
an  thoose  dirty  dealins  wi  th'  Irish  devils  !  Yo  should  ha  yerd 
it,  Davy — yo  should,  I'll  uphowd  yo  ! ' 

And  placing  his  stick  between  his  knees,  the  old  man  leant  his 
hands  upon  it,  with  a  meditative  and  judicial  air.  The  boy  stood 
looking  down  at  him,  a  broad  smile  lighting  up  the  dark  and  vivid 
face.  Old  'Lias  supplied  him  with  a  perpetual  '  spectacle '  which 
never  palled. 


CHAP,  ii  CHILDHOOD  11 

'  Coe  him  back,  'Lias,  he's  soomwheer  about.  Yo  need  nobbut 
coe  him,  an  he'll  coom.' 

'Lias  looked  fatuously  pleased.  He  lifted  his  head  and  affected 
to  scan  the  path  along  which  he  had  just  travelled. 

'  Aye,  I  daur  say  he's  not  far. — Yor  Majesty  ! ' 

And  'Lias  laid  his  head  on  one  side  and  listened.  In  a  few 
seconds  a  cunning  smile  stole  over  his  lips. 

4  Wai,  Davy,  yo're  in  luck.  He's  noan  so  onwillin,  we'st  ha  him 
here  in  a  twinklin.  Yo  may  coe  him  mony  things,  but  yo  conno 
coe  him  proud.  Noa,  as  I've  fund  him,  Charles  Stuart  has  no 
soart  o'  pride  about  him.  Aye,  theer  yo  are  !  Sir,  your  Majesty's 
obleeged  an  humble  servant ! ' 

And,  raising  his  hand  to  his  hat,  the  old  man  took  it  off  and 
swept  it  round  with  a  courtly  deliberation.  Then  replacing  it,  he 
sat  with  his  face  raised,  as  though  to  one  standing  near,  his  whole 
attitude  full  of  a  careful  and  pompous  dignity. 

'Now  then,  yor  Majesty,'  said  'Lias  grimly,  '  I'st  ha  to  put 
that  question  to  yo,  yance  moor,  yo  wor  noan  so  well  pleased  wi 
this  mornin.  But  yo  shouldno  be  soa  tender,  mon !  Th'  truth 
can  do  yo  noa  harm,  wheer  yo  are,  an  I'm  nobbut  askin  for  infor- 
mashuri's  sake.  Soa  out  wi  it;  I'st  not  use  it  agen  yo.  That 
— wee — bit — o' — damned— paper, — man,  what  sent  poor  Strafford 
to  his  eend — yo  mind  it  ? — aye,  'a£  yo  do  !  Well,  now ' — and  the  old 
man's  tone  grew  gently  seductive — '  explain  yursel.  We'n  had 
their  tale,'  and  he  pointed  away  to  some  imaginary  accusers. 
'  But  yo  mun  trust  an  Englishman's  sense  o'  fair  play.  Say  your 
say.  We  'st  gie  yo  a  varra  patient  hearin.' 

And  with  chin  thrown  up,  and  his  half -blurred  eyes  blinking 
under  their  white  lashes,  'Lias  waited  with  a  bland  imperativeness 
for  the  answer. 

*  Eh  ? '  said  'Lias  at  last,  frowning  and  hollowing  his  hand  to 
his  ear. 

He  listened  another  few  seconds,  then  he  dropped  his  hand 
sharply. 

'  What's  'at  yo're  sayin  ? '  he  asked  hastily;  '  'at  yo  couldno 
help  it,  not  whatever — that  i'  truth  yo  had  nothin  to  do  wi  't,  no 
moor  than  mysel — that  yo  wor  forcit  to  it — willy-nilly — by  them 
devils  o'  Parliament  foak — by  Mr.  Pym  and  his  loike,  wi  whom,  if 
God-amighty  ha'  not  reckoned  since,  theer's  no  moor  justice  i' 
His  Kingdom  than  yo  found  i'  yours  ? ' 

The  words  came  out  with  a  rush,  tumbling  over  one  another  till 
they  suddenly  broke  off  in  a  loud  key  of  indignant  scorn.  Then 
'Lias  fell  silent  a  moment,  and  slowly  shook  his  head  over  the 
inveterate  shuffling  of  the  House  of  Stuart. 

'  'Twinna  do,  man — 'twinna  do,'  he  said  at  last,  with  an  air  of 
fine  reproof.  '  He  wor  your  friend,  wor  that  poor  sinner  Strafford 
— your  awn  familiar  friend,  as  t'  Psalm  says.  I'm  not  takin  up  a 
brief  for  him,  t'  Lord  knows  !  He  wor  but  meetin  his  deserts,  to 
my  thinkin,  when  his  yed  went  loupin.  But  yo  put  a  black  mark 
agen  yore  name  when  yo  signed  that  bit  paper  for  your  awn  skin's 


12  THR  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

sake.  Naw,  naw,  man,  yo  should  ha  lost  your  awn  yed  a  bit 
sooner  fust.  Eh,  it  wor  base — it  wor  cooardly  ! ' 

'Lias's  voice  dropped,  and  he  fell  muttering  to  himself  indis- 
tinctly. David,  bending  over  him,  could  not  make  out  whether 
it  was  Charles  or  his  interlocutor  speaking,  and  began  to  be  afraid 
that  the  old  man's  performance  was  over  before  it  had  well  begun. 
But  on  the  contrary,  'Lias  emerged  with  fresh  energy  from  the 
gulf  of  inarticulate  argument  in  which  his  poor  wits  seemed  to 
have  lost  themselves  awhile. 

'But  I'm  no  blamin  yo  awthegither,'  he  cried,  raising  himself, 
with  a  protesting  wave  of  the  hand.  '  Theer's  naw  mak  o'  mis- 
chief i'  this  world,  but  t'  women  are  at  t'  bottom  o't.  Whar's 
that  proud  foo  of  a  wife  o'  yourn  ?  Send  her  here,  man;  send  her 
here  !  'Lias  Dawson  ull  mak  her  hear  reason  !  Now,  Davy  ! ' 

And  the  old  man  drew  the  lad  to  him  with  one  hand,  while  he 
raised  a  finger  softly  with  the  other. 

*  Just  study  her,  Davy,  my  lad,'  he  said  in  an  undertone,  which 
swelled  louder  as  his  excitement  grew,  '  theer  she  stan's,  by  t'  side 
o'  t'  King.  She's  a  gay  good-lookin  female,  that  I'll  confess  to, 
but  study  her;  look  at  her  curls,  Davy,  an  her  paint,  an  her 
nakedness.  For  shame,  madam  !  Goo  hide  that  neck  o'  yourn, 
goo  hide  it,  I  say !  An  her  faldaddles,  an  her  jewles,  an  her 
ribbons.  Is  that  a  woman — a  French  hizzy  like  that — to  get  a 
King  out  o'  trooble,  wha's  awready  lost  aw  t'  wits  he  wor  born 
wi?' 

And  with  sparkling  eyes  and  outstretched  arm  'Lias  pointed 
sternly  into  vacancy.  Thrilled  with  involuntary  awe  the  boy  and 
girl  looked  round  them.  For,  in  spite  of  herself,  Louie  had  come 
closer,  little  by  little,  and  was  now  sitting  cross-legged  in  front  of 
'Lias.  Then  Louie's  shrill  voice  broke  in — 

'  Tell  us  what  she's  got  on  ! '  And  the  girl  leant  eagerly  for- 
ward, her  magnificent  eyes  kindling  into  interest. 

'  What  she's  got  on,  my  lassie  ?  Eh,  but  I'm  feart  your  yead, 
too,  is  fu'  o'  gauds  ! — Wai,  it's  but  nateral  to  females.  She's  aw 
in  white  satin,  my  lassie, — an  in  her  brown  hair  theer's  pearls,  an 
a  blue  ribbon  just  howdin  down  t'  little  luve-locks  on  her  forehead 
— an  on  her  saft  neck  theer's  pearls  again — not  soa  white,  by  a 
thoosand  mile,  as  her  white  skin — an  t'  lace  fa's  ower  her  proud 
shoothers,  an  down  her  luvely  arms — an  she  looks  at  me  wi  her 
angry  eyes — Eh,  but  she's  a  queen  ! '  cried  'Lias,  in  a  sudden 
outburst  of  admiration.  '  She  hath  been  a  persecutor  o'  th' 
saints — a  varra  Jeezebel — the  Lord  hath  put  her  to  shame — but 
she's  moor  sperrit — moor  p'  t'  blood  o'  kingship  i'  her  little  finger, 
nor  Charles  theer  in  aw  his  body  ! ' 

And  by  a  strange  and  crazy  reversal  of  feeling,  the  old  man 
sat  in  a  kind  of  ecstasy,  enamoured  of  his  own  creation,  looking 
into  thin  air.  As  for  Louie,  during  the  description  of  the  Queen's 
dress  she  had  drunk  in  every  word  with  a  greedy  attention, 
her  changing  eyes  fixed  on  the  speaker's  face.  When  he  stopped, 
however,  she  drew  a  long  breath. 


CHAP.  II  CHILDHOOD  li 

'  It's  aw  lees  ! '  she  said  scornfully. 

'  Ilowd  your  tongue,  Louie  ! '  cried  David,  angrily. 

But  'Lias  took  no  notice.  He  was  talking  again  very  fast, 
but  incoherently.  Hampden,  Pym,  Fairfax,  Falkland — the  great 
names  clattered  past  every  now  and  then,  like  horsemen,  through 
a  maze  of  words,  but  with  no  perceptible  order  or  purpose.  The 
phrases  concerning  them  came  to  nothing ;  and  though  there 
were  apparently  many  voices  speaking,  nothing  intelligible  could 
be  made  out. 

When  next  the  mists  cleared  a  little  from  the  old  visionary's 
brain,  David  gathered  that  Cromwell  was  close  by,  defending 
himself  with  difficulty,  apparently,  like  Charles,  against  'Lias's 
assaults.  In  his  youth  and  middle  age— until,  in  fact,  an  event 
of  some  pathos  and  mystery  had  broken  his  life  across,  and  cut 
him  off  from  his  profession — 'Lias  had  been  a  zealous  teacher  and 
a  voracious  reader  ;  and  through  the  dreams  of  fifteen  years  the 
didactic  faculty  had  persisted  and  grown  amazingly.  He  played 
schoolmaster  now  to  all  the  heroes  of  history.  Whether  it  were 
Elizabeth  wrangling  with  Mary  Stuart,  or  Cromwell  marshalling 
his  Ironsides,  or  Buckingham  falling  under  the  assassin's  dagger 
at  'Lias's  feet,  or  Napoleon  walking  restlessly  up  and  down  the 
deck  of  the  'Bellerophon,'  'Lias  rated  them  every  one.  He  was 
lord  of  a  shadow  world,  wherein  he  walked  with  kings  and 
queens,  warriors  and  poets,  putting  them  one  and  all  superbly  to 
rights.  Yet  so  subtle  were  the  old  man's  wits,  and  so  bright 
his  fancy,  even  in  derangement,  that  he  preserved  through  it 
all  a  considerable  measure  of  dramatic  fitness.  He  gave  his  pup- 
pets a  certain  freedom  ;  he  let  them  state  their  case ;  and  threw 
almost  as  much  ingenuity  into  the  pleading  of  it  as  into  the 
refuting  of  it.  Of  late,  since  he  had  made  friends  with  Davy 
Grieve,  he  had  contracted  a  curious  habit  of  weaving  the  boy 
into  his  visions. 

'  Davy,  Avhat's  your  opinion  o'  that  ? '  or,  '  Davy,  my  lad,  did 
yo  iver  hear  sich  clit-clat  i'  your  life  ? '  or  again,  '  Davy,  yo'll 
not  be  misled,  surely,  by  sich  a  piece  o'  speshul-plcadin  as  that  ? r 

So  the  appeals  would  run,  and  the  boy,  at  first  bewildered, 
and  even  irritated  by  them,  as  by  something  which  threw  hin- 
drances in  the  way  of  the  only  dramatic  entertainment  the  High 
Peak  was  likely  to  afford  him,  had  learnt  at  last  to  join  in  them 
with  relish.  Many  meetings  with  'Lias  on  the  moorside,  which 
the  old  seer  made  alive  for  both  of  them — the  plundering  of 
'Lias's  books,  whence  he  had  drawn  the  brown  '  Josephus '  in 
his  pocket — these  had  done  more  than  anything  else  to  stock 
the  boy's  head  with  its  present  strange  jnmble  of  knowledge 
and  ideas.  Knowledge,  indeed,  it  scarcely  was,  but  rather  the 
materials  for  a  certain  kind  of  excitement. 

'  Wai,  Davy,  did  yo  hear  that  ? '  said  'Lias,  presently,  look- 
ing round  on  the  boy  with  a  doubtful  countenance,  after  Crom- 
well had  given  an  unctuous  and  highly  Biblical  account  of  the 
slaughter  at  Drogheda  and  its  reasons. 


14  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

'  How  mony  did  he  say  he  killed  at  that  place  ? '  asked  the 
boy  sharply. 

'  Thoosands,'  said  Dawson,  solemnly.  '  Theer  was  naw  mercy 
asked  nor  gi'en.  And  those  wha  escaped  knockin  on  t'  yead 
were  aw  sold  as  slaves — every  mon  jock  o'  them ! ' 

A  strong  light  of  anger  showed  itself  in  David's  face. 

'  Then  he  wor  a  cantin  murderer  !  Yo  mun  tell  hina  so  !  If 
I'd  my  way,  he'd  hang  for  't ! ' 

'Eh,  laddie,  they  were  no wt  but  rebels  an  Papists,'  said  the 
old  man,  complacently. 

'  Don't  yo  becall  Papists  ! '  cried  David,  fiercely,  facing  round 
upon  him.  '  My  mither  wor  a  Papist. ' 

A  curious  change  of  expression  appeared  on  'Lias's  face.  He 
put  his  hand  behind  his  ear  that  he  might  hear  better,  turned 
a  pair  of  cunning  eyes  on  David,  while  his  lips  pressed  them- 
selves together. 

'  Your  mither  wor  a  Papist  ?  an  your  f  eyther  wor  Sandy 
Grieve.  Ay,  ay  —  I've  yeerd  tell  strange  things  o'  Sandy 
Grieve's  wife,'  he  said  slowly. 

Suddenly  Louie,  who  had  been  lying  full  length  on  her  back 
in  the  sun,  with  her  hat  over  her  face,  apparently  asleep,  sat 
bolt  upright. 

'Tell  us  what  about  her,'  she  said  imperiously. 

'Noa — noa,'  said  the  old  man,  shaking  his  head,  while  a 
sort  of  film  seemed  to  gather  over  the  eyes,  and  the  face  and 
features  relaxed — fell,  as  it  were,  into  their  natural  expression 
of  weak  senility,  which  so  long  as  he  was  under  the  stress  of 
his  favourite  illusions  was  hardly  apparent.  '  But  it's  true — it's 
varra  true — I've  yeerd  tell  strange  things  about  Sandy  Grieve's 
wife. ' 

And  still  aimlessly  shaking  his  head,  he  sat  staring  at  the 
opposite  side  of  the  ravine,  the  lower  jaw  dropping  a  little. 

'He  knows  nowt  about  it,'  said  David,  roughly,  the  light  of 
a  sombre,  half -reluctant  curiosity,  which  had  arisen  in  his  look, 
dying  down. 

He  threw  himself  on  the  grass  by  the  dogs,  and  began  teasing 
and  playing  with  them.  Meanwhile  Louie  sat  studying  'Lias 
with  a  frowning  hostility,  making  faces  at  him  now  and  then 
by  way  of  amusement.  To  disappoint  the  impetuous  will  em- 
bodied in  that  small  frame  was  to  commit  an  offence  of  the 
first  order. 

But  one  might  as  well  make  faces  at  a  stone  post  as  at  old 
'Lias  when  his  wandering  fit  was  on  him.  When  the  entertain- 
ment palled,  Louie  got  up  with  a  yawn,  meaning  to  lounge  back 
to  the  farm  and  investigate  the  nearness  of  dinner.  But,  as  she 
turned,  something  caught  her  attention.  It  was  the  gleam  of  a 
pool,  far  away  beyond  the  Downfall,  on  a  projecting  spur  of  the 
moor. 

'  What  d'  yo  coe  that  bit  watter  ? "  she  asked  David,  suddenly 
pointing  to  it. 


CHAP,  ii  CHILDHOOD  15 

David  rolled  himself  round  on  his  face,  and  took  a  look  at  the 
bluish  patch  on  the  heather. 

'  It  hasna  got  naw  name,'  he  said,  at  a  venture. 

'  Then  yo're  a  stoopid,  for  it  has,'  replied  Louie,  triumphantly. 
'  It's  t'  Mermaid  Pool.  Theer  wor  a  Manchester  mon  at  Wig- 
sons'  last  week,  telling  aw  maks  o'  tales.  Theer's  a  mermaid 
lives  in  't — a  woman,  I  tell  tha,  wi  a  fish's  tail — it's  in  a  book,  an 
he  read  it  out,  soa  theer — an  on  Easter  Eve  neet  she  cooms  out, 
an  walks  about  t'  Scout,  combin  her  hair — an  if  onybody  sees  her 
an  wishes  for  soomthin,  they  get  it,  sartin  sure  ;  an ' 

'  Mermaids  is  just  f addle  an  nonsense,'  interrupted  David, 
tersely. 

'  Oh,  is  they  ?  Then  I  spose  books  is  faddle.  Most  on  'em 
are — t'  kind  of  books  yo  like — I'll  uphowd  yo  ! ' 

'  Oh,  is  they  ? '  said  David,  mimicking  her.  '  Wai,  I  like  'em, 
yo  see,  aw  t'  same.  I  tell  yo,  mermaids  is  nonsense,  cos  I  know 
they  are.  Theer  was  yan  at  Hayfield  Fair,  an  the  fellys  they 
nearly  smashed  t'  booth  down,  cos  they  said  it  wor  a  cheat. 
Theer  was  just  a  gell,  an  they  'd  stuffed  her  into  a  fish's  skin 
and  sewed  'er  up;  an  when  yo  went  close  yo  could  see  t' 
stuffin  runnin  out  of  her.  An  theer  was  a  man  as  held  'er  up 
by  a  wire  roun  her  waist,  an  waggled  her  i'  t'  waiter.  But  t'  foak 
as  had  paid  sixpence  to  coom  in,  they  just  took  an  tore  down  t' 
place,  an  they  'd  'a  dookt  t'  man  an  t'  gell  boath,  if  th'  coonstable 
hadn't  coom.  Naw,  mermaids  is  faddle,'  he  repeated  contemp- 
tuously. 

'  Faddle  ? '  repeated  'Lias,  interrogatively. 

The  children  started.  They  had  supposed  'Lias  was  off  doting 
and  talking  gibberish  for  the  rest  of  the  morning.  But  his  tone 
was  brisk,  and  as  David  looked  up  he  caught  a  queer  flickering 
brightness  in  the  old  man's  eye,  which  showed  him  that  'Lias  was 
once  more  capable  of  furnishing  amusement  or  information. 

'  What  do  they  coe  that  bit  watter,  'Lias  ? '  he  inquired,  point- 
ing to  it. 

'  That  bit  watter  ? '  repeated  'Lias,  eyeing  it.  A  sort  of  vague 
trouble  came  into  his  face,  and  his  wrinkled  hands  lying  on  his 
stick  began  to  twitch  nervously. 

'  Aye — theer's  a  Manchester  mail  been  cramming  Wigsons  wi 
tales — says  he  gets  'em  out  of  a  book — 'bout  a  woman  'at  walks  t' 
Scout  Easter  Eve  neet, — an  a  lot  o'  ninny-hommer's  talk.  Yo 
niver  heerd  nowt  about  it — did  yo,  'Lias  ? ' 

'  Yes,  yo  did,  Mr.  Dawson — now,  didn't  yo  ? '  said  Louie,  per- 
suasively, enraged  that  David  would  never  accept  information 
from  her,  while  she  was  always  expected  to  take  it  from  him. 

'  A  woman — 'at  walks  t'  Scout,'  said  'Lias,  uncertainly,  flush- 
ing as  he  spoke. 

Then,  looking  tremulously  from  his  companions  to  the  pool,  he 
said,  angrily  raising  his  stick  and  shaking  it  at  David,  '  Davy, 
yo're  takin  advantage— Davy,  yo're  doin  what  yo  owt  not.  If 
my  Margret  were  here,  she  'd  let  yo  know  ! ' 


16  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

The  words  rose  into  a  cry  of  quavering  passion.  The  children 
stared  at  him  in  amazement.  But  as  Davy,  aggrieved,  was 
defending  himself,  the  old  man  laid  a  violent  hand  on  his  arm  and 
silenced  him.  His  eyes,  which  were  black  and  keen  still  in  the 
blanched  face,  were  riveted  on  the  gleaming  pool.  His  features 
worked  as  though  under  the  stress  of  some  possessing  force;  a 
shiver  ran  through  the  emaciated  limbs. 

'Oh!  yo  want  to  know  abeawt  Jenny  Crum's  pool,  do  yo?' 
he  said  at  last  in  a  low  agitated  voice.  'Nobbut  look,  my  lad! — 
nobbut  look! — an  see  for  yoursen.' 

He  paused,  his  chest  heaving,  his  eye  fixed.  Then,  suddenly, 
he  broke  out  in  a  flood  of  passionate  speech,  still  gripping  David. 

' Passon  Maine!  Passon  Maine! — ha  yo  got  her,  th'  owd 
woman  ?  Aye,  aye — sure  enough — 'at 's  she — as  yo're  aw  driyin 
afore  yo — hoontit  like  a  wild  bee'ast — wi  her  grey  hair  streamin, 
and  her  hands  tied — Ah! ' — and  the  old  man  gave  a  wild  cry, 
which  startled  both  the  children  to  their  feet.  '  Conno  yo  hear 
her  ? — eh,  but  it's  enough  to  tear  a  body's  heart  out  to  hear  an 
owd  woman  scream  like  that! ' 

He  stopped,  trembling,  and  listened,  his  hand  hollowed  to  his 
ear.  Louie  looked  at  her  brother  and  laughed  nervously;  but  her 
little  hard  face  had  paled.  David  laid  hold  of  her  to  keep  her 
quiet,  and  shook  himself  free  of  'Lias.  But  'Lias  took  no  notice 
of  them  now  at  all,  his  changed  seer's  gaze  saw  nothing  but  the 
distance  and  the  pool. 

'  Are  yo  quite  sure  it  wor  her,  Passon  ? '  he  went  on,  appeal- 
ingly.  '  She's  nobbut  owd,  an  it's  a  far  cry  fro  her  bit  cottage  to 
owd  Needham's  Farm.  An  th'  chilt  might  ha  deed,  and  t'  cattle 
might  ha  strayed,  and  t'  geyats  might  ha  opened  o'  theirsels  ! 
Yo'll  not  dare  to  speak  agen  that.  They  might  ?  Ay,  ay,  we  aw 
know  t'  devil's  strong  ;  but  she's  eighty-one  year  coom  Christmas 

— an — an .     Doan't,  doarit  let  t'  childer  see,  nor  t'  yoong 

gells !    If  yo  let  em  see  sich  seets  they'll  breed  yo  wolves,  not 
babes  !    Ah  !  ' 

And  again  'Lias  gave  the  same  cry,  and  stood  half  risen,  his 
hands  on  his  staff,  looking. 

'  What  is  it,  'Lias  ? '  said  David,  eagerly  ;  '  what  is  't  yo  see  ? ' 

'Theer's  my  grandfeyther,'  said  'Lias,  almost  in  a  whisper, 
'  an  owd  Needham  an  his  two  brithers,  an  yoong  Jack  Needham's 
woife — her  as  losst  her  babby — an  yoong  lads  an  lasses  fro 
Clough  End,  childer  awmost,  and  t'  coonstable,  an  Passon  Maine — 
Ay — ay — yo've  doon  it  !  Yo've  doon  it !  She'll  mak  naw  moor 
mischeef  neets — she's  gay  quiet  now  !  T'  watter's  got  her  fasst 
enough ! ' 

And,  drawing  himself  up  to  his  full  height,  the  old  man 
pointed  a  quivering  finger  at  the  pool. 

'  Ay,  it's  got  her — an  your  stones  are  tied  fasst !     Passon 
Maine  says  she's  safe — that  yo'll  see  her  naw  moor — 
While  holly  sticks  be  green, 
While  stone  on  Kinder  Scoot  be  seen. 


CHAP.  II  CHILDHOOD  17 

But  /  tell  yo,  Passon  Maine  lees  !    I  tell  yo  t'  witch  ull  walk — 
t'  witch  ull  walk  ! ' 

For  several  seconds  'Lias  stood  straining  forward — out  of 
himself — a  tragic  and  impressive  figure.  Then,  in  a  moment, 
from  that  distance  his  weird  gift  had  been  re-peopling,  some- 
thing else  rose  towards  him — some  hideous  memory,  as  it  seemed, 
of  personal  anguish,  personal  fear.  The  exalted  seer's  look  van- 
ished, the  tension  within  gave  way,  the  old  man  shrank  together. 
He  fell  back  heavily  on  the  stone,  hiding  his  face  in  his  hands, 
and  muttering  to  himself. 

The  children  looked  at  each  other  oddly.  Then  David,  half 
afraid,  touched  him. 

'  What's  t'  matter,  'Lias  ?    Are  yo  bad  ? ' 

The  old  man  did  not  move.  They  caught  some  disjointed 
words, — '  cold — ay,  t'  neet's  cold,  varra  cold  ! ' 

'  'Lias  ! '  shouted  David. 

'Lias  looked  up  startled,  and  shook  his  head  feebly. 

'  Are  yo  bad,  'Lias  ? ' 

'  Ay  ! '  said  the  old  schoolmaster,  in  the  voice  of  one  speaking 
through  a  dream — '  ay,  varra  bad,  varra  cold — I  mun — lig  me 
down — a  bit.' 

And  he  rose  feebly.  David  instinctively  caught  hold  of  him, 
and  led  him  to  a  corner  close  by  in  the  ruined  walls,  where  the 
heather  and  bilberry  grew  thick  up  to  the  stones.  'Lias  sank 
down,  his  head  fell  against  the  wall,  and  a  light  and  restless 
sleep  seemed  to  take  possession  of  him. 

David  stood  studying  him,  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  Never 
in  all  his  experience  of  him  had  'Lias  gone  through  such  a  perfor- 
mance as  this.  What  on  earth  did  it  mean  ?  There  was  more  in 
it  than  appeared,  clearly.  He  would  tell  Margaret,  'Lias's  old 
wife,  who  kept  him  and  tended  him  like  the  apple  of  her  eye. 
And  he  would  find  out  about  the  pool,  anyway.  Jenny  Crmri's 
pool?  What  on  earth  did  that  mean?  The  name  had  never 
reached  his  ears  before.  Of  course  Uncle  Reuben  would  know. 
The  boy  eyed  it  curiously,  the  details  of  'Lias's  grim  vision 
returning  upon  him.  The  wild  circling  moor  seemed  suddenly  to 
have  gained  a  mysterious  interest. 

'  Didn't  I  tell  yo  he  wor  gone  silly  ?'  said  Louie,  triumphantly, 
at  his  elbow. 

'  He's  not  gone  that  silly,  onyways,  but  he  can  freeten  little 
gells,'  remarked  David,  dryly,  instinctively  putting  out  an  arm, 
meanwhile,  to  prevent  her  disturbing  the  poor  sleeper. 

'I  worn't  freetened,'  insisted  Louie;  *?/o  were!  He  may 
skrike  aw  day  if  he  likes — for  aw  I  care.  He'll  be  runnin  into 
hedges  by  dayleet  soon.  Owd  churn-yed  ! ' 

'  Howd  your  clatterin  tongue  ! '  said  David,  angrily,  pushing 
her  out  of  the  doorway.  She  lifted  a  loose  sod  of  heather,  which 
lay  just  outside,  flung  it  at  him,  and  then  took  to  her  heels,  and 
made  for  the  farm  and  dinner,  with  the  speed  of  a  wild  goat. 

David  brushed  his  clothes,  took  a  stroll  with  the  dogs,  and 


18  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

recovered  his  temper  as  best  he  might.  "When  he  came  back, 
pricked  by  the  state  of  his  appetite,  to  see  whether  'Lias  had 
recovered  enough  sanity  to  get  home,  he  found  the  old  man 
sitting  up,  looking  strangely  white  and  exhausted,  and  fumbling, 
in  a  dazed  way,  for  the  tobacco  to  which  he  always  resorted  at 
moments  of  nervous  fatigue.  His  good  wife  Margaret  never  sent 
him  out  without  mended  clothes,  spotless  linen,  and  a  paper  of 
tobacco  in  his  pocket.  He  sat  chewing  it  awhile  in  silence  ; 
David's  remarks  to  him  met  with  only  incoherent  answers,  and 
at  last  the  schoolmaster  got  up  and  with  the  help  of  his  stick 
tottered  off  along  the  path  by  which  he  had  oome.  David's  eyes 
followed  the  bent  figure  uneasily ;  nor  did  he  turn  homeward  till 
it  disappeared  over  the  brow. 

CHAPTER  III 

ANYONE  opening  the  door  of  Needham  Farm  kitchen  that  night 
at  eight  would  have  found  the  inmates  at  supper — a  meagre 
supper,  which  should,  according  to  the  rule  of  the  house,  have 
been  eaten  in  complete  silence.  Hannah  Grieve,  the  children's 
aunt,  and  mistress  of  the  farm,  thought  it  an  offence  to  talk  at 
meals.  She  had  not  been  so  brought  up. 

But  Louie  this  evening  was  in  a  state  of  nerves.  The  after- 
noon had  seen  one  of  those  periodical  struggles  between  her  and 
Hannah,  which  did  so  much  to  keep  life  at  Xeedham  Farm  from 
stagnating  into  anything  like  comfort.  The  two  combatants, 
however,  must  have  taken  a  certain  joy  in  them,  since  they 
recurred  with  so  much  regularity.  Hannah  had  won,  of  course, 
as  the  grim  self-importance  of  her  bearing  amply  showed.  Louie 
had  been  forced  to  patch  the  house-linen  as  usual,  mainly  by  the 
temporary  confiscation  of  her  Sunday  hat,  the  one  piece  of  decent 
clothing  she  possessed,  and  to  which  she  clung  with  a  feverish 
attachment — generally,  indeed,  sleeping  with  it  beside  her  pillow. 
But,  though  she  was  beaten,  she  was  still  seething  with  rebellion. 
Her  eyes  were  red,  but  her  shaggy  head  was  thrown  back 
defiantly,  and  theie  was  hysterical  battle  in  the  expression  of 
her  sharply-tilted  nose  and  chin. 

'  Mind  yorsel,'  cried  Hannah  angrily,  as  the  child  put  down 
her  plate  of  porridge  with  a  bang  which  made  the  housewife 
tremble  for  her  crockery. 

'  What's  t'  matter  wi  yo,  Louie  ? '  said  Uncle  Reuben,  looking 
at  her  with  some  discomfort.  He  had  just  finished  the  delivery 
of  a  long  grace,  into  which  he  had  thrown  much  unction,  and 
Louie's  manners  made  but  an  ill-fitting  Amen. 

'  It's  nasty  ! '  said  the  child  passionately.  '  It's  allus  porridge 
— porridge — porridge — porridge — an  I  hate  it — an  it's  bitter — an 
it's  a  shame  !  I  wish  I  wor  at  Wigson's — 'at  I  do  ! ' 

Davy  glanced  up  at  his  sister  under  his  eyebrows.  Hannah 
scanned  her  niece  all  over  with  a  slow,  observant  scrutiny,  as 
though  she  were  a  dangerous  animal  that  must  be  watched. 


CHAP,  in  CHILDHOOD  19 

Otherwise  Louie  might  have  spoken  to  the  wall  for  all  the  effect 
she  produced.  Reuben,  however,  was  more  vulnerable. 

'What  d'  yo  want  to  be  at  Wigson's  for?'  he  asked.  'Yo 
should  be  content  wi  your  state  o'  life,  Louie.  It's  a  sin  to  be 
discontented — I've  tellt  yo  so  many  times.' 

'  They've  got  scones  and  rhubarb  jam  for  tea  ! '  cried  the  child, 
tumbling  the  news  out  as  though  she  were  bursting  with  it. 
'  Mrs.  Wigson,  she's  allus  makin  em  nice  things.  She's  kind,  she 
is — she's  nice — she  wouldn't  make  em  eat  stuff  like  this — she'd 
give  it  to  the  pigs — 'at  she  would  ! ' 

And  all  the  time  it  was  pitiful  to  see  how  the  child  was  gob- 
bling up  her  unpalatable  food,  evidently  from  the  instinctive  fear, 
nasty  as  it  was,  that  it  would  be  taken  from  her  as  a  punishment 
for  her  behaviour. 

'Now,  Louie,  yo're  a  silly  gell,'  began  Reuben,  expostulating  ; 
but  Hannah  interposed. 

'  I  wudn't  advise  yo,  Reuben  Grieve,  to  go  wastin  your  breath 
on  sich  a  minx.  If  I  were  yo,  I'd  keep  it  fur  my  awn  eating. ' 

And  she  calmly  put  another  slice  of  cold  bacon  on  his  plate, 
as  though  reminding  him  of  his  proper  business.  Reuben  fell 
silent  and  munched  his  bacon,  though  he  could  not  forbear  study- 
ing his  niece  every  now  and  then  uncomfortably.  He  was  a  tall, 
large-boned  man,  with  weakish  eyes,  sandy  whiskers  and  beard, 
grown  in  a  fringe  round  his  long  face,  and  a  generally  clumsy 
and  disjointed  air.  The  tremulous,  uncertain  movements  of  his 
hand  as  he  stretched  it  out  for  one  article  of  food  after  another 
seemed  to  express  the  man's  character. 

Louie  went  on  gulping  down  her  porridge.  Her  plate  was 
just  empty  when  Hannah  caught  a  movement  of  Reuben's  fork. 
He  was  in  the  act  of  furtively  transferring  to  Louie  a  portion  of 
bacon.  But  he  could  not  restrain  himself  from  looking  at  Han- 
nah as  he  held  out  the  morsel.  Hannah's  answering  look  was  too 
much  for  him.  The  bacon  went  into  his  mouth. 

Supper  over,  Louie  went  out  to  sit  on  the  steps,  and  Hannah 
contemptuously  forbore  to  make  her  come  in  and  help  clear  away. 
Out  in  the  air,  the  child  slowly  quieted  down.  It  was  a  clear, 
frosty  April  night,  promising  a  full  moon.  The  fresh,  nipping 
air  blew  on  the  girl's  heated  temples  and  swollen  eyes.  Against 
her  will  almost,  her  spirits  came  back.  She  swept  Aunt  Hannah 
out  of  her  mind,  and  began  to  plan  something  which  consoled 
her.  When  would  they  have  their  stupid  prayers  and  let  her  get 
upstairs  ? 

David  meanwhile  hung  about  the  kitchen.  He  would  have 
liked  to  ask  Uncle  Reuben  about  the  pool  and  'Lias's  story,  but 
Hannah  was  bustling  about,  and  he  never  mentioned  'Lias  in  her 
hearing.  To  do  so  would  have  been  like  handing  over  something 
weak,  for  which  he  had  a  tenderness,  to  be  worried. 

But  he  rummaged  out  an  old  paper-covered  guide  to  the  Peak, 
which  he  remembered  to  have  been  left  at  the  farm  one  summer's 
day  by  a  passing  tourist,  who  paid  Hannah  handsomely  for  some 


20  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

bread  and  cheese.  Turning  to  the  part  which  concerned  Clough 
End,  Hayfield,  and  the  Scout,  he  found  : — 

'  In  speaking  of  the  Mermaiden's  Pool,  it  may  be  remarked 
that  the  natives  of  several  little  hamlets  surrounding  Kinder 
Scout  have  long  had  a  tradition  that  there  is  a  beautiful  woman — 
an  English  Hamadryad — lives  in  the  side  of  the  Scout ;  that  she 
comes  to  bathe  every  day  in  the  Mermaid's  Well,  and  that  the 
man  who  has  the  good  luck  to  behold  her  bathing  will  become 
immortal  and  never  die.' 

David  shut  the  book  and  fell  pondering,  like  many  another 
wiser  mortal  before  him,  on  the  discrepancies  of  evidence.  What 
was  a  Hamadryad  ?  and  why  no  mention  of  Easter  Eve  ?  and 
what  had  it  all  to  do  with  the  witch  and  Parson  Maine  and 
'Lias's  excitement  ? 

Meanwhile,  the  thump  made  by  the  big  family  Bible  as  Han- 
nah deposited  it  on  the  table  warned  both  him  and  the  truant 
outside  that  prayer-time  had  come.  Louie  came  in  noisily  when 
she  was  called,  and  both  children  lounged  unwillingly  into  their 
appointed  seats. 

Nothing  but  the  impatience  and  indifference  of  childhood, 
however,  could  have  grudged  Keuben  Grieve  the  half -hour  which 
followed.  During  that  one  half -hour  in  the  day,  the  mild,  effaced 
man,  whose  absent-minded  ways  and  complete  lack  of  business 
faculty  were  the  perpetual  torment  of  his  wife,  was  master  of  his 
house.  While  he  was  rolling  out  the  psalm,  expounding  the 
chapter,  or  '  wrestling '  in  prayer,  he  was  a  personality  and  an 
influence  even  for  the  wife  who,  in  spite  of  a  dumb  congruity  of 
habit,  regarded  him  generally  as  incompetent  and  in  the  way. 
Reuben's  religious  sense  was  strong  and  deep,  but  some  very 
natural  and  pathetically  human  instincts  entered  also  into  his 
constant  pleasure  in  this  daily  function.  Hannah,  with  her  strong 
and  harsh  features  settled  into  repose,  with  her  large  hands,  red- 
dened by  the  day's  work,  lying  idle  in  her  lap,  sat  opposite  to  him 
in  silence  ;  for  once  she  listened  to  him,  whereas  all  day  he  had 
listened  to  her ;  and  the  moment  made  a  daily  oasis  in  the  life  of 
a  man  who,  in  his  own  dull,  peasant  way,  knew  that  he  was  a 
failure,  and  knew  also  that  no  one  was  so  well  aware  of  it  as  his 
wife. 

With  David  and  Louie  the  absorbing  interest  was  generally  to 
see  whether  the  prayer  would  be  over  before  the  eight-day  clock 
struck  nine,  or  whether  the  loud  whirr  which  preceded  that  event 
would  be  suddenly  and  deafeningly  let  loose  upon  Uncle  Reuben 
in  the  middle  of  his  peroration,  as  sometimes  happened  when 
the  speaker  forgot  himself.  To-night  that  catastrophe  was  just 
avoided  by  a  somewhat  obvious  hurry  through  the  Lord's  Prayer. 
When  they  rose  from  their  knees  Hannah  put  away  the  Bible,  the 
boy  and  girl  raced  each  other  upstairs,  and  the  elders  were  left 
alone. 

An  hour  passed  away.  Reuben  was  dozing  peacefully  in  the 
chimney-corner;  Aunt  Hannah  had  just  finished  putting  a  patch 


CHAP.  Ill  CHILDHOOD  21 

on  a  pair  of  Reuben's  trousers,  was  folding  up  her  work  and  pre- 
paring to  rouse  her  slumbering  companion,  when  a  sound  over- 
head caught  her  ear. 

'  What's  that  chilt  at  now  ? '  she  exclaimed  angrily,  getting  up 
and  listening.  '  She'd  owt  ta  been  in  bed  long  ago.  Soomthin 
mischeevous,  I'll  be  bound.'  And  lighting  a  dip  beside  her,  she 
went  upstairs  with  a  treacherously  quiet  step.  There  was  a  sound 
of  an  opening  door,  and  then  Reuben  downstairs  was  startled  out 
of  his  snooze  by  a  sudden  gamut  of  angry  cries,  a  scurrying  of 
feet,  and  Hannah  scolding  loudly — 

*  Coom  downstairs  wi  yo  ! — coom  down  an  show  your  uncle 
what  a  figure  o'  f oon  yo'n  been  makkin  o'  yorseP !  I'st  teach  yp  to 
burn  three  cardies  down  awbut  to  nothink  'at  yo  may  bedizen 
yorsel  in  this  way.  Coom  along  wi  yo. ' 

There  was  a  scuffle  on  the  stairs,  and  then  Hannah  burst  open 
the  door,  dragging  in  an  extraordinary  figure  indeed.  Struggling 
and  crying  in  her  aunt's  grip  was  Louie.  White  trailing  folds 
swept  behind  her;  a  white  garment  underneath,  apparently  her 
nightgown,  was  festooned  with  an  old  red-and-blue  striped  sash 
of  some  foreign  make.  Round  her  neck  hung  a  necklace  of  that 
gold  filigree  work  which  spreads  from  Genoa  all  along  the  Riviera; 
her  magnificent  hair  hung  in  masses  over  her  shoulders,  crowned 
by  the  primroses  of  the  morning,  which  had  been  hurriedly  twisted 
into  a  wreath  by  a  bit  of  red  ribbon  rummaged  out  of  some  drawer 
of  odds-and-ends;  and  her  thin  brown  arms  and  hands  appeared 
under  the  white  cloak — nothing  but  a  sheet — which  was  being 
now  trodden  underfoot  in  the  child's  passionate  efforts  to  get  away 
from  her  aunt.  Ten  minutes  before  she  had  been  a  happy  queen 
flaunting  over  her  attic  floor  in  a  dream  of  joy  before  a  broken, 
propped-up  looking-glass  under  the  splendid  illumination  of  three 
dips,  long  since  secreted  for  purposes  of  the  kind.  Now  she  was 
a  bedraggled,  tear-stained  Fury,  with  a  fierce  humiliation  and  a 
boundless  hatred  glaring  out  of  the  eyes,  which  in  Aunt  Hannah's 
opinion  were  so  big  as  to  be  '  right  down  oogly. '  Poor  Louie  ! 

Uncle  Reuben,  startled  from  his  snooze  by  this  apparition, 
looked  at  it  with  a  sleepy  bewilderment,  and  fumbled  for  his  spec- 
tacles. '  Ay,  yo'd  better  luke  at  her  close,'  said  Hannah,  grimly, 
giving  her  niece  a  violent  shake  as  she  spoke;  'I  wor  set  yo 
should  just  see  her  fur  yance  at  her  antics.  Yo  say  soomtimes  I'm 
hard  on  her.  Well,  I'd  ask  ony  pusson  aloive  if  they'd  put  up  wi 
this  soart  o'  thing — dressin  up  like  a  bad  hizzy  that  waaks  t' 
streets,  wi  three  candles — three,  I  tell  yo,  Reuben — flarin  away, 
and  the  curtains  close  to,  an  nothink  but  the  Lord's  mussy  keepin 
'em  from  catchin.  An  she  peacockm  an  gallivantin  away  enough 
to  mak  a  cat  laugh  ! ' 

And  Aunt  Hannah  in  her  enraged  scorn  even  undertook  a  gro- 
tesque and  mincing  imitation  of  the  peacocking  aforesaid.  '  Let 
goo  ! '  muttered  Ixniie  between  her  shut  teeth,  and  with  a  wild 
strength  she  at  last  flung  off  her  aunt  and  sprang  for  the  door. 
But  Hannah  was  too  quick  for  her  and  put  her  back  against  it. 


22  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

'  No— yo'll  not  goo  till  your  ooncle  there's  gien  yo  a  word.  He 
shan't  say  I'm  hard  on  yo  for  nothink,  yo  good-for-nowt  little 
powsement — he  shall  see  yo  as  yo  are  ! ' 

And  with  the  bitterness  of  a  smouldering  grievance,  expressed 
in  every  feature,  Hannah  looked  peremptorily  at  her  husband. 
He,  poor  man,  was  much  perplexed.  The  hour  of  devotion  was 
past,  and  outside  it  he  was  not  accustomed  to  be  placed  in  impor- 
tant situations. 

'  Louie — didn't  yo  know  yo  wor  a  bad  gell  to  stay  up  and  burn 
t'  candles,  an  fret  your  aunt  ? '  he  said  with  a  feeble  solemnity, 
his  look  fixed  on  the  huddled  white  figure  against  the  mahogany 
press. 

Louie  stood  with  eyes  resolutely  cast  down,  and  a  forced  smile, 
tremulous,  but  insolent  to  a  degree,  slowly  lifting  up  the  corners 
of  her  mouth  as  Uncle  Reuben  addressed  her.  The  tears  were 
still  running  off  her  face,  but  she  meant  her  smile  to  convey  the 
indomitable  scorn  for  her  tormentors  which  not  even  Aunt  Hannah 
could  shake  out  of  her. 

Hannah  Grieve  was  exasperated  by  the  child's  expression. 

'  Yo  little  sloot ! '  she  said,  seizing  her  by  the  arm  again,  and 
losing  her  temper  for  good  and  all,  '  yo've  got  your  mither's  bad 
blude  in  yo — an  it  ull  coom  out,  happen  what  may  ! ' 

'  Hannah  ! '  exclaimed  Reuben,  '  Hannah — mind  yoursel.' 

'My  mither's  dead,'  said  the  child,  slowly  raising  her  dark, 
burning  eyes.  '  My  mither  worn't  bad ;  an  if  yo  say  she  wor, 
yo're  a  beast  for  sayin  it !  I  wish  it  wor  yo  wor  dead,  an  my 
mither  wor  here  instead  o'  yo  ! ' 

To  convey  the  concentrated  rage  of  this  speech  is  impossible. 
It  seemed  to  Hannah  that  the  child  had  the  evil  eye.  Even  she 
quailed  under  it. 

'Go  'long  wi  yo,'  she  said  grimly,  in  a  white  heat,  while  she 
opened  the  door — '  an  the  less  yo  coom  into  my  way  for  t'  future, 
the  better.' 

She  pushed  the  child  out  and  shut  the  door. 

'  Yo  are  hard  on  her,  Hannah ! '  exclaimed  Reuben,  in  his 
perplexity — pricked,  too,  as  usual  in  his  conscience. 

The  repetition  of  this  parrot-cry,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  mad- 
dened his  wife. 

'She's  a  wanton's  brat,'  she  said  violently  ;  '  an  she's  got  t' 
wanton's  blood.' 

Reuben  was  silent.  He  was  afraid  of  his  wife  in  these  moods. 
Hannah  began,  with  trembling  hands,  to  pick  up  the  contents  of 
her  work-basket,  which  had  been  overturned  in  the  scuffle. 

Meanwhile  Louie  rushed  upstairs,  stumbling  over  and  tearing 
her  finery,  the  convulsive  sobs  beginning  again  as  soon  as  the 
tension  of  her  aunt's  hated  presence  was  removed. 

At  the  top  she  ran  against  something  in  the  dark.  It  was 
David,  who  had  been  hanging  over  the  stairs,  listening.  But  she 
flung  past  him. 

'  What's  t'  matter,  Louie  ? '  he  asked  in  a  loud  whisper  through 


CHAP,  in  CHILDHOOD  28 

the  door  she  .shut  in  his  face  ;  '  what's  th'  owd  crosspatch  been 
slangin  about  ? ' 

But  he  got  no  answer,  and  he  was  afraid  of  being  caught 
by  Aunt  Hannah  if  he  forced  his  way  in.  So  he  went  back  to 
his  own  room,  and  closed,  without  latching,  his  door.  He  had 
had  an  inch  of  dip  to  go  to  bed  with,  and  had  spent  that  on 
reading.  His  book  was  a  battered  copy  of  '  Anson's  Voyages,' 
which  also  came  from  'Lias's  store,  and  he  had  been  straining  his 
eyes  over  it  with  enchantment.  Then  had  come  the  sudden  noise 
upstairs  and  down,  and  his  candle  and  his  pleasure  had  gone  out 
together.  The  heavy  footsteps  of  his  uncle  and  aunt  ascending 
warned  him  to  keep  quiet.  They  turned  into  their  room,  and 
locked  their  door  as  their  habit  was.  David  noiselessly  opened 
his  window  and  looked  out. 

A  clear  moonlight  reigned  outside.  He  could  distinguish  the 
rounded  shapes,  the  occasional  movements  of  the  sheep  in  their 
pen  to  the  right  of  the  farmyard.  The  trees  in  the  field  threw 
long  shadows  down  the  white  slope  ;  to  his  left  was  the  cart-shed 
with  its  black  caverns  and  recesses,  and  the  branches  of  the 
apple-trees  against  the  luminous  sky.  Owls  were  calling  in  the 
woods  below ;  sometimes  a  bell  round  the  neck  of  one  of  the 
sheep  tinkled  a  little,  and  the  river  made  a  distant  background  of 
sound. 

The  boy's  heart  grew  heavy.  After  the  noises  in  the  Grieves' 
room  ceased  he  listened  for  something  which  he  knew  must  be 
in  the  air,  and  caught  it — the  sound  of  a  child's  long,  smothered 
sobs.  On  most  nights  they  would  not  have  made  much  impression 
on  him.  Louie's  ways  with  her  brother  were  no  more  engaging 
than  with  the  rest  of  the  world;  and  she  was  not  a  creature  who 
invited  consolation  from  anybody.  David,  too,  with  his  power  of 
escape  at  any  time  into  a  world  of  books  and  dreams  or  simply 
into  the  wild  shepherd  life  of  the  moors,  was  often  inclined  to  a 
vague  irritation  with  Louie's  state  of  perpetual  revolt.  The  food 
was  nasty,  their  clothes  were  ugly  and  scanty,  Aunt  Hannah  was 
as  hard  as  nails — at  the  same  time  Louie  was  enough  to  put 
anybody's  back  up.  What  did  she  get  by  it? — that  was  his 
feeling ;  though,  perhaps,  he  never  shaped  it.  He  had  never 
felt  much  pity  for  her.  She  had  a  way  of  putting  herself  out  of 
court,  and  he  was,  of  course,  too  young  to  see  her  life  or  his 
own  as  a  whole.  What  their  relationship  might  mean  to  him 
was  still  vague — to  be  decided  by  the  future.  Whatever  softness 
there  was  in  the  boy  was  at  this  moment  called  out  by  other 
people — by  old  'Lias  and  his  wife  ;  by  Mr.  Ancrum,  the  lame 
minister  at  dough  End ;  by  the  dogs ;  hardly  ever  by  Louie. 
He  had  grown  used,  moreover,  to  her  perpetual  explosions,  and 
took  them  generally  with  a  boy's  natural  callousness. 

But  to-night  her  woes  affected  him  as  they  had  never  done 
before.  The  sound  of  her  sobbing,  as  he  stood  listening, 
gradually  roused  in  him  an  unbearable  restlessness.  An  un- 
accountable depression  stole  upon  him  —  the  reaction,  perhaps, 


24  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

from  a  good  deal  of  mental  exertion  and  excitement  in  the  day. 
A  sort  of  sick  distaste  awoke  in  him  for  most  of  the  incidents 
of  existence — for  Aunt  Hannah,  for  Uncle  Reuben's  incompre- 
hensible prayers,  for  the  thought  of  the  long  Puritanical  Sunday 
just  coming.  And,  in  addition,  the  low  vibrations  of  that  distant 
sobbing  stirred  in  him  again,  by  association,  certain  memories 
which  were  like  a  clutch  of  physical  pain,  and  which  the  healthy 
young  animal  instinctively  and  passionately  avoided  whenever  it 
could.  But  to-night,  in  the  dark  and  in  solitude,  there  were 
no  distractions,  and  as  the  boy  put  his  head  down  on  his  arms, 
rolling  it  from  side  to  side  as  though  to  shake  them  off,  the 
same  old  images  pursued  him — the  lodging-house  room,  and 
the  curtainless  iron  bed  in  which  he  slept  with  his  father  ;  remi- 
niscences of  some  long,  inexplicable  anguish  through  which  that 
father  had  passed  ;  then  of  his  death,  and  his  own  lonely  crying. 
He  seemed  still  to  feel  the  strange  sheets  in  that  bed  upstairs, 
where  a  compassionate  fellow-lodger  had  put  him  the  night  after 
his  father  died  ;  he  sat  up  again  bewildered  in  the  cold  dawn, 
filled  with  a  home-sickness  too  benumbing  for  words.  He 
resented  these  memories,  tried  to  banish  them ;  but  the  nature 
on  which  they  were  impressed  was  deep  and  rich,  and,  once 
shaken,  vibrated  long.  The  boy  trembled  through  and  through. 
The  more  he  was  ordinarily  shed  abroad,  diffused  in  the  life 
of  sensation  and  boundless  mental  curiosity,  the  blacker  were 
these  rare  moments  of  self-consciousness,  when  all  the  world 
seemed  pain,  an  iron  vice  which  pinched  and  tortured  him. 

At  last  he  went  to  his  door,  pulled  it  gently  open,  and  with 
bare  feet  went  across  to  Louie's  room,  which  he  entered  with 
infinite  caution.  The  moonlight  was  streaming  in  on  the  poor 
gauds,  which  lay  wildly  scattered  over  the  floor.  David  looked 
at  them  with  amazement.  Amongst  them  he  saw  something 
glittering.  He  picked  it  up,  saw  it  was  a  gold  necklace  which 
had  been  his  mother's,  and  carefully  put  it  on  the  little  toilet 
table. 

Then  he  walked  on  to  the  bed.  Louie  was  lying  with  her  face 
turned  away  from  him.  A  certain  pause  in  the  sobbing  as  he 
came  near  told  him  that  she  knew  he  was  there.  But  it  began 
again  directly,  being  indeed  a  physical  relief  which  the  child  could 
not  deny  herself.  He  stood  beside  her  awkwardly.  He  could 
think  of  nothing  to  say.  But  timidly  he  stretched  out  his  hand 
and  laid  the  back  of  it  against  her  wet  cheek.  He  half  expected 
she  would  shake  it  off,  but  she  did  not.  It  made  him  feel  less 
lonely  that  she  let  it  stay;  the  impulse  to  comfort  had  somehow 
brought  himself  comfort.  He  stood  there,  feeling  very  cold, 
thinking  a  whirlwind  of  thoughts  about  old  'Lias,  about  the  sheep, 
about  Titus  and  Jerusalem,  and  a  'X)ut  Louie's  extraordinary  pro- 
ceedings— till  suddenly  it  struck  him  that  Louie  was  not  crying 
any  more.  He  bent  over  her.  The  sobs  had  changed  into  the 
long  breaths  of  sleep,  and,  gently  drawing  away  his  hand,  he 
crept  off  to  bed. 


CHAP.  IT  CHILDHOOD  25 


CHAPTER   IV 

IT  was  Sunday  afternoon,  still  cold,  nipping,  and  sunny.  Reuben 
Grieve  sat  at  the  door  of  the  farmhouse,  his  pipe  in  his  hand,  a 
'  good  book '  on  his  knee.  Beyond  the  wall  which  bounded  the 
farmyard  he  could  hear  occasional  voices.  The  children  were 
sitting  there,  he  supposed.  It  gave  him  a  sensation  of  pleasure 
once  to  hear  a  shrill  laugh,  which  he  knew  was  Louie's.  For  all 
this  morning,  through  the  long  services  in  the  '  Christian  Brethren ' 
chapel  at  Clough  End,  and  on  the  walk  home,  he  had  been  once 
more  pricked  in  his  conscience.  Hannah  and  Louie  were  not  on 
speaking  terms.  At  meals  the  aunt  assigned  the  child  her  coarse 
food  without  a  word,  and  on  the  way  to  chapel  and  back  there 
had  been  a  stony  silence  between  them.  It  was  evident,  even  to 
his  dull  mind,  that  the  girl  was  white  and  thin,  and  that  between 
her  wild  temper  and  mischief  and  the  mirth  of  other  children 
there  was  a  great  difference.  Moreover,  certain  passages  in  the 
chapel  prayers  that  morning  had  come  home  sharply  to  a  mind 
whereof  the  only  definite  gift  was  a  true  religious  sensitiveness. 
The  text  of  the  sermon  especially — '  Whoso  loveth  not  his  brother, 
whom  he  hath  seen,  how  shall  he  love  God,  whom  he  hath  not 
seen  ? ' — vibrated  like  an  accusing  voice  within  him.  As  he  sat 
in  the  doorway,  with  the  sun  stealing  in  upon  him,  the  clock 
ticking  loudly  at  his  back,  and  the  hens  scratching  round  the 
steps,  he  began  to  think  with  much  discomfort  about  his  dead 
brother  and  his  brother's  children. 

As  to  his  memories  of  the  past,  they  may  perhaps  be  trans- 
formed here  into  a  short  family  history,  with  some  details  added 
which  had  no  place  in  Reuben's  mind.  Twenty  years  before  this 
present  date  Needham — once  Needham's — Farm  had  been  held  by 
Reuben's  father,  a  certain  James  Grieve.  He  had  originally  been 
a  kind  of  farm-labourer  on  the  Berwickshire  border,  who,  driven 
southwards  in  search  of  work  by  the  stress  of  the  bad  years  which 
followed  the  great  war,  had  wandered  on,  taking  a  job  of  work 
here  and  another  there,  and  tramping  many  a  score  of  weary 
miles  between,  till  at  last  in  this  remote  Derbyshire  valley  he  had 
found  a  final  anchorage.  Needham  Farm  was  then  occupied  by 
a  young  couple  of  the  name  of  Pierson,  beginning  life  under 
fairly  prosperous  circumstances.  James  Grieve  took  service  with 
them,  and  they  valued  his  strong  sinews  and  stern  Calvinistic 
probity  as  they  deserved.  But  he  had  hardly  been  two  years  on  the 
farm  when  his  young  employer,  dozing  one  winter  evening  on  the 
shafts  of  his  cart  coming  back  from  Glossop  market,  fell  off,  was 
run  over,  and  killed.  The  widow,  a  young  thing,  nearly  lost  her 
senses  with  grief,  and  James,  a  man  of  dour  exterior  and  few 
words,  set  himself  to  keep  things  going  on  the  farm  till  she  was 
able  to  look  life  in  the  face  again.  Her  sister  came  to  be  with 
her,  and  there  was  a  child  born,  which  died.  She  was  left  better 


26  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

provided  for  than  most  women  of  her  class,  and  she  had  expecta- 
tions from  her  parents.  After  the  child's  death,  when  the  widow 
began  to  go  about  again,  and  James  still  managed  all  the  work  of 
the  farm,  the  neighbours  naturally  fell  talking.  James  took  no 
notice,  and  he  was  not  a  man  to  meddle  with,  either  in  a  public- 
house  or  elsewhere.  But  presently  a  crop  of  suitors  for  the  widow 
began  to  appear,  and  it  became  necessary  also  to  settle  the  destiny 
of  the  farm.  No  one  outside  ever  knew  how  it  came  about,  for 
Jenny  Pierson,  who  was  a  soft,  prettyish  creature,  had  given  no 
particular  sign ;  but  one  Sunday  morning  the  banns  of  James 
Grieve,  bachelor,  and  Jenny  Pierson,  widow,  were  suddenly  given 
out  in  the  Presbyterian  chapel  at  Clough  End,  to  the  mingled 
astonishment  and  disgust  of  the  neighbourhood. 

Years  passed  away.  James  held  his  own  for  a  time  with  any 
farmer  of  the  neighbourhood.  But,  by  the  irony  of  fate,  the 
prosperity  which  his  industry  and  tenacity  deserved  was  filched 
from  him  little  by  little  by4he  ill-health  of  his  wife.  She  bore 
him  two  sons,  Keuben  and  Alexander,  and  then  she  sank  into  a 
hopeless,  fretful  invalid,  tormented  by  the  internal  ailment  of 
which  she  ultimately  died.  But  the  small  farmer  who  employs 
little  or  no  labour  is  lost  without  an  active  wife.  If  he  has  to  pay 
for  the  milking  of  his  cows,  the  making  of  his  butter,  the  cooking 
of  his  food,  and  the  nursing  of  his  children,  his  little  margin  of 
profit  is  soon  eaten  away ;  and  with  the  disappearance  of  this 
margin,  existence  becomes  a  blind  struggle.  Even  James  Grieve, 
the  man  of  iron  will  and  indomitable  industry,  was  beaten  at  last 
in  the  unequal  contest.  The  life  at  the  farm  became  bitter  and 
tragic.  Jenny  grew  more  helpless  and  more  peevish  year  by  year; 
James  was  not  exactly  unkind  to  her,  but  he  could  not  but 
revenge  upon  her  in  some  degree  that  ruin  of  his  silent  ambitions 
which  her  sickliness  had  brought  upon  him. 

The  two  sons  grew  up  in  the  most  depressing  atmosphere 
conceivable.  Keuben,  who  was  to  have  the  farm,  developed  a 
shy  and  hopeless  taciturnity  under  the  pressure  of  the  family 
chagrin  and  privations,  and  found  his  only  relief  in  the  emo- 
tions and  excitements  of  Methodism.  Sandy  seemed  at  first 
more  fortunate.  An  opening  was  found  for  him  at  Sheffield, 
where  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  rope-maker,  a  cousin  of  his 
mother's.  This  man  died  before  Sandy  was  more  than  half- 
way through  his  time,  and  the  youth  went  through  a  period 
of  hardship  and  hand-to-mouth  living  which  ended  at  last  in 
the  usual  tramp  to  London.  Here,  after  a  period  of  semi-star- 
vation, he  found  it  impossible  to  get  work  at  his  own  trade, 
and  finally  drifted  into  carpentering  and  cabinet-making. 
The  beginnings  of  this  new  line  of  life  were  incredibly  diffi- 
cult, owing  to  the  jealousy  of  his  fellow-workmen,  who  had 
properly  served  their  time  to  the  trade,  and  did  not  see  why 
an  interloper  from  another  trade,  without  qualifications,  should 
be  allowed  to  take  the  bread  out  of  their  mouths.  One  of 
Sandy's  first  successes  was  in  what  was  called  a  '  shop-meet- 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  37 

ing,'  a  gathering  of  all  the  employe's  of  the  firm  he  worked 
for,  before  whom  the  North-countryman  pleaded  to  be  allowed 
to  earn  his  bread.  The  tall,  finely  grown,  famished-looking  lad 
spoke  with  a  natural  eloquence,  and  here  and  there  with  a 
Biblical  force  of  phrase — the  inheritance  of  his  Scotch  blood 
and  training — which  astonished  and  melted  most  of  his  hearers. 
He  was  afterwards  let  alone,  and  even  taught  by  the  men 
about  him,  in  return  for  'drinks,'  which  swallowed  up  some- 
times as  much  as  a  third  of  his  wages. 

After  two  or  three  years  he  was  fully  master  of  his  trade,  an 
admirable  workman,  and  a  keen  politician  to  boot.  All  this  time 
he  had  spent  his  evenings  in  self -education,  buying  books  with 
every  spare  penny,  and  turning  specially  to  science  and  mathe- 
matics. His  abilities  presently  drew  the  attention  of  the  heads 
of  the  Shoreditch  firm  for  which  he  worked,  and  when  the  post 
of  a  foreman  in  a  West-end  shop,  in  which  they  were  largely 
interested,  fell  vacant,  it  was  their  influence  which  put  Sandy 
Grieve  into  the  well-paid  and  coveted  post.  He  could  hardly 
believe  his  own  good  fortune.  The  letter  in  which  he  announced 
it  to  his  father  reached  the  farm  just  as  the  last  phase  of  his 
mother's  long  martyrdom  was  developing.  The  pair,  already  old 
— James  with  work  and  anxiety,  his  wife  with  sickness — read  it 
together.  They  shut  it  up  without  a  word.  Its  tone  of  jubilant 
hope  seemed  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  them,  or  seemed  rather 
to  make  their  own  narrowing  prospects  look  more  narrow,  and 
the  approach  of  the  King  of  Terrors  more  black  and  relentless, 
than  before.  Jenny  lay  back  on  her  poor  bed,  with  the  tears  of 
a  dumb  self-pity  running  down  her  cheeks,  and  James's  only 
answer  to  it  was  conveyed  in  a  brief  summons  to  Sandy  to 
come  and  see  his  mother  before  the  end.  The  prosperous  son, 
broadened  out  of  knowledge  almost  by  good  feeding  and  good 
clothes,  arrived.  He  brought  money,  which  was  accepted  without 
much  thanks ;  but  his  mother  treated  him  almost  as  a  stranger, 
and  the  dour  James,  while  not  unwilling  to  draw  out  his 
account  of  himself,  would  look  him  up  and  down  from  under 
his  bushy  grey  eyebrows,  and  often  interpose  with  some  sarcasm 
on  his  'foine'  ways  of  speaking,  or  his  '  gen'leman's  cloos.' 
Sandy  was  ill  at  ease.  He  was  really  anxious  to  help,  and  his 
heart  was  touched  by  his  mother's  state;  but  perhaps  there  was  a 
strain  of  self-importance  in  his  mariner,  a  half-conscious  inclina- 
tion to  thank  God  that  his  life  was  not  to  be  as  theirs,  which 
came  out  in  spite  of  him,  and  dug  a  gulf  between  him  and  them. 
Only  his  brother  Reuben,  dull,  pious,  affectionate  Eeuben,  took 
to  him,  and  showed  that  patient  and  wondering  admiration 
of  the  younger's  cleverness,  which  probably  Sandy  had  reckoned 
on  as  his  right  from  his  parents  also. 

On  the  last  evening  of  his  stay — he  had  luckily  been  able 
to  make  his  coming  coincide  with  an  Easter  three  days'  holi- 
day— he  was  sitting  beside  his  mother  in  the  dusk,  thinking, 
with  a  relief  which  every  now  and  then  roused  in  him  a 


28  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

pang  of  shame,  that  in  fourteen  or  fifteen  more  hours  he  should 
be  back  in  London,  in  the  world  which  made  much  of  him  and 
knew  what  a  smart  fellow  he  was,  when  his  mother  opened  her 
eyes — so  wide  and  blue  they  looked  in  her  pinched,  death-stricken 
face — and  looked  at  him  full. 

' Sandy  1 ' 

'  Yes,  mother ! '  he  said,  startled — for  he  had  been  sunk  in  his 
own  thoughts — and  laying  his  hand  on  hers. 

'  You  should  get  a  wife,  Sandy.' 

'  Well,  some  day,  mother,  I  suppose  I  shall,'  he  said,  with  a 
change  of  expression  which  the  twilight  concealed. 

She  was  silent  a  minute,  then  she  began  again,  slow  and  feebly, 
but  with  a  strange  clearness  of  articulation. 

'  If  she's  sick,  Sandy,  doari't  grudge  it  her.  Women  'ud  die 
fasster  iv  they  could.' 

The  whole  story  of  the  slow  consuming  bitterness  of  years 
spoke  through  those  fixed  and  filmy  eyes.  Her  son  gave  a  sud- 
den irrepressible  sob.  There  was  a  faint  lightening  in  the  little 
wrinkled  face,  and  the  lips  made  a  movement.  He  kissed  her, 
and  in  that  last  moment  of  consciousness  the  mother  almost  for- 
gave him  his  good  clothes  and  his  superior  airs. 

Poor  Sandy  !  Looking  to  his  after  story,  it  seems  strange 
that  any  one  should  ever  have  felt  him  unbearably  prosperous. 
About  six  months  after  his  mother's  death  he  married  a  milliner's 
assistant,  whom  he  met  first  in  the  pit  of  a  theatre,  and  whom 
he  was  already  courting  when  his  mother  gave  him  the  advice 
recorded.  She  was  French,  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Aries, 
and  of  course  a  Catholic.  She  had  come  to  London  originally  as 
lady's-maid  to  a  Eussian  family  settled  at  Nice.  Shortly  after 
their  arrival,  her  master  shot  his  young  wife  for  a  supposed 
intrigue,  and  then  put  an  end  to  himself.  Naturally  the  whole 
establishment  was  scattered,  and  the  pretty  Louise  Suveret  found 
herself  alone,  with  a  few  pounds,  in  London.  Thanks  to  the 
kind  offices  of  the  book-keeper  in  the  hotel  where  they  had  been 
staying,  she  had  been  introduced  to  a  milliner  of  repute  in  the 
Bond  Street  region,  and  the  results  of  a  trial  given  her,  in  which 
her  natural  Frenchwoman's  gift  and  her  acquired  skill  came  out 
triumphant,  led  to  her  being  permanently  engaged.  Thencefor- 
ward her  good  spirits — which  had  been  temporarily  depressed, 
not  so  much  by  her  mistress's  tragic  ending  as  by  her  own  unex- 
pected discomfort — reappeared  in  all  their  native  exuberance, 
and  she  proceeded  to  enjoy  London.  She  defended  herself  first 
against  the  friendly  book-keeper,  who  became  troublesome,  and 
had  to  be  treated  with  the  most  decided  ingratitude.  Then  she 
gradually  built  herself  up  a  store  of  clothes  of  the  utmost 
elegance,  which  were  the  hopeless  envy  of  the  other  girls 
employed  at  Madame  Catherine's.  And,  finally,  she  looked  about 
for  serviceable  acquaintances. 

One  night,  in  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  while  '  The  Lady 
of  Lyons '  was  going  on,  Sandy  Grieve  found  himself  next  to  a 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  29 

dazzling  creature,  with  fine  black  eyes,  the  smooth  olive  skin  of 
the  South,  white  teeth,  and  small  dimpled  hands,  hardly  spoilt  at 
all  by  her  trade.  She  had  with  her  a  plain  girl-companion,  and 
her  manner,  though  conscious  and  provocative,  had  that  haughti- 
ness, that  implied  readiness  to  take  offence,  which  is  the  grisette's 
substitute  for  breeding.  She  was,  however,  affable  to  Sandy, 
whose  broad  shoulders  and  handsome,  well-to-do  air  attracted 
her  attention.  She  allowed  him  to  get  her  a  programme,  to 
beguile  her  into  conversation,  and,  finally,  to  offer  her  a  cup  of 
coffee.  Afterwards  he  escorted  the  two  to  the  door  of  their 
lodging,  in  one  of  the  streets  off  Theobald's  Eoad,  and  walked 
home  in  a  state  of  excitement  which  astonished  him. 

This  happened  immediately  before  his  visit  to  the  farm  and 
his  mother's  death.  During  the  six  months  after  that  event 
Sandy  knew  the  'joy  of  eventful  living.'  He  was  establishing 
his  own  business  position,  and  he  was  courting  Louise  Suveret 
with  alternations  of  despair  and  flattered  passion,  which  stirred 
the  now  burly,  full-blooded  North-countryman  to  his  depths. 
She  let  him  escort  her  to  her  work  in  the  morning  and  take  her 
home  in  the  evening,  and  she  allowed  him  to  give  her  as  many 
presents  of  gloves,  ribbons,  bonbons — for  which  last  she  had  a 
childish  passion — and  the  like,  as  he  pleased.  But  when  he 
pressed  her  to  marry  him  she  generally  laughed  at  him.  She 
was,  in  reality,  observing  her  world,  calculating  her  chances,  and 
she  had  several  other  strings  to  her  bow,  as  Sandy  shrewdly  sus- 
pected, though  she  never  allowed  his  jealousy  any  information  to 
feed  upon.  It  was  simply  owing  to  the  failure  of  the  most  pro- 
mising of  thess  other  strings — a  failure  which  roused  in  Louise 
one  of  those  white  heats  of  passion  which  made  the  chief  flaw  in  ^ 
her  organisation,  viewed  as  a  pleasure-procuring  machine — that' 
Sandy  found  his  opportunity.  In  a  moment  of  mortal  chagrin 
and  outraged  vanity  she  consented  to  marry  him,  and  three 
weeks  afterwards  he  was  the  blissful  owner  of  the  black  eyes,  the 
small  hands,  the  quick  tongue,  and  the  seductive  chiffons  he  had 
so  long  admired  more  or  less  at  a  distance. 

Their  marriage  lasted  six  years.  At  first  Louise  found  some 
pleasure  in  arranging  the  little  house  Sandy  had  taken  for  her  in 
a  new  suburb,  and  in  making,  wearing,  and  altering  the  addi- 
tional gowns  which  their  joint  earnings — for  she  still  worked 
intermittently  at  her  trade — allowed  her  to  enjoy.  After  the 
first  infatuation  was  a  little  cooled,  Sandy  discovered  in  her  a 
paganism  so  unblushing  that  his  own  Scotch  and  Puritan 
instincts  reacted  in  a  sort  of  superstitious  fear.  It  seemed 
impossible  that  God  Almighty  should  long  allow  Himself  to  be 
flouted  as  Louise  flouted  Him.  He  found  also  that  the  sense  of 
truth  was  almost  non-existent  in  her,  and  her  vanity,  her  greed 
of  dress  and  admiration,  was  so  consuming,  so  frenzied,  that  his 
only  hope  of  a  peaceful  life — as  he  quickly  realised — lay  in  minis- 
tering to  it.  Her  will  soon  got  the  upper  hand,  and  he  sank  into 
the  patient  servant  of  her  pleasures,  snatching  feverishly  at  all 


30  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

she  gave  him  in  return  with  the  instinct  of  a  man  who,  having 
sold  his  soul,  is  determined  at  least  to  get  the  last  farthing  he 
can  of  the  price. 

They  had  two  children  in  four  years — David  Suveret  and 
Louise  Stephanie.  Louise  resented  the  advent  of  the  second  so 
intensely  that  poor  Sandy  become  conscious,  before  the  child 
appeared,  of  a  fatal  and  appalling  change  in  her  relation  to  him. 
She  had  been  proud  of  her  first-born — an  unusually  handsome 
and  precocious  child — and  had  taken  pleasure  in  dressing  it  and 
parading  it  before  the  eyes  of  the  other  mothers  in  their  terrace, 
all  of  whom  she  passionately  despised.  But  Louie  nearly  died  of 
neglect,  and  the  two  years  that  followed  her  birth  were  black 
indeed  for  Sandy.  His  wife,  he  knew,  had  begun  to  hate  him  ; 
in  business  his  energies  failed  him,  and  his  employers  cooled 
towards  him  as  he  grew  visibly  less  pushing  and  inventive.  The 
little  household  got  deeper  and  deeper  into  debt,  and  towards  the 
end  of  the  time  Louise  would  sometimes  spend  the  whole  day 
away  from  home  without  a  word  of  explanation.  So  great  was 
his  nervous  terror — strong,  broad  fellow  that  he  was — of  that 
pent-up  fury  in  her,  which  a  touch  might  have  unloosed,  that 
he  never  questioned  her.  At  last  the  inevitable  end  came.  He 
got  home  one  summer  evening  to  find  the  house  empty  and  ran- 
sacked, the  children — little  things  of  five  and  two— sitting  crying 
in  the  desolate  kitchen,  and  a  crowd  of  loud-voiced,  indignant 
neighbours  round  the  door.  To  look  for  her  would  have  been 
absurd.  Louise  was  much  too  clever  to  disappear  and  leave 
traces  behind.  Besides,  he  had  no  wish  to  find  her.  The  heredi- 
tary self  in  him  accepted  his  disaster  as  representing  the  natural 
retribution  which  the  canny  Divine  vengeance  keeps  in  store  for 
those  who  take  to  themselves  wives  of  the  daughters  of  Heth. 
And  there  was  the  sense,  too,  of  emerging  from  something 
unclean,  of  recovering  his  manhood. 

He  took  his  two  children  and  went  to  lodgings  in  a  decent 
street  near  the  Gray's  Inn  Eoad.  There  for  a  year  things  went 
fairly  well  with  him.  His  boy  and  girl,  whom  he  paid  a  neigh- 
bour to  look  after  during  the  day,  made  something  to  come  home 
to.  As  he  helped  the  boy,  who  was  already  at  school,  with  his 
lesson  for  the  next  day,  or  fed  Louie,  perched  on  his  knee,  with 
the  bits  from  his  plate  demanded  by  her  covetous  eyes  and  open 
mouth,  he  got  back,  little  by  little,  his  self-respect.  He  returned, 
too,  in  the  evenings  to  some  of  his  old  pursuits,  joined  a  Radical 
club  near,  and  some  science  lectures.  He  was  aged  and  much 
more  silent  than  of  yore,  but  not  unhappy ;  his  employers,  too, 
feeling  that  their  man  had  somehow  recovered  himself,  and  hear- 
ing something  of  his  history,  were  sorry  for  him,  and  showed  it. 

Then  one  autumn  evening  a  constable  knocked  at  his  door, 
and,  coming  in  upon  the  astonished  group  of  father  and  children, 
produced  from  his  pocket  a  soaked  and  tattered  letter,  and  show- 
ing Sandy  the  address,  asked  if  it  was  for  him.  Sandy,  on  seeing 
it,  stood  up,  put  down  Louie,  who,  half  undressed,  had  been 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  31 

having  a  ride  on  his  knee,  and  asked  his  visitor  to  come  out  on 
to  the  landing.  There  he  read  the  letter  under  the  gas-lamp,  and 
put  it  deliberately  into  his  pocket. 

'  Where  is  she  ? '  he  asked. 

'  In  Lambeth  mortuary,'  said  the  man  briefly — '  picked  up  two 
hours  ago.  Nothing  else  found  on  her  but  this.' 

Half  an  hour  afterwards  Sandy  stood  by  a  slab  in  the  mortuary, 
and,  drawing  back  a  sheet  which  covered  the  burden  on  it,  stood 
face  to  face  with  his  dead  wife.  The  black  brows  were  drawn, 
the  small  hands  clenched.  What  struck  Sandy  with  peculiar 
horror  was  that  one  delicate  wrist  was  broken,  having  probably 
struck  something  in  falling.  She — who  in  life  had  rebelled  so 
hotly  against  the  least  shadow  of  physical  pain  !  Thanks  to  the 
bandage  which  had  been  passed  round  it,  the  face  was  not  much 
altered.  She  could  not  have  been  long  in  the  water.  Probably 
about  the  time  when  he  was  walking  home  from  work,  she — 
He  felt  himself  suffocating — the  bare  whitewashed  walls  grew  dim 
and  wavering. 

The  letter  found  upon  her  was  the  strangest  appeal  to  his  pity. 
Her  seducer  had  apparently  left  her ;  she  was  in  dire  straits,  and 
there  was,  it  seemed,  no  one  but  Sandy  in  all  London  on  whose 
compassion  she  could  throw  herself.  She  asked  him,  callously, 
for  money  to  take  her  back  to  some  Nice  relations.  They  need 
only  know  what  she  chose  to  tell  them,  as  she  calmly  pointed  out, 
and,  once  in  Nice,  she  could  make  a  living.  She  would  like  to 
see  her  children,  she  said,  before  she  left,  but  she  supposed  he 
would  have  to  settle  that.  How  had  she  got  his  address  ?  From 
his  place  of  business  probably,  in  some  roundabout  way. 

Then  what  had  happened  ?  Had  she  been  seized  with  a  sudden 
persuasion  that  he  would  not  answer,  that  it  was  all  useless 
trouble;  and  in  one  of  those  accesses  of  blind  rage  by  which  her 
clear,  sharp  brain-life  was  at  all  times  apt  to  be  disturbed,  had 
she  rushed  out  to  end  it  all  at  once  and  for  ever  ?  It  made  him 
forgive  her  that  she  could  have  destroyed  herself — could  have 
faced  that  awful  plunge — that  icy  water — that  death-struggle  for 
breath.  He  gauged  the  misery  she  must  have  gone  through  by 
what  he  knew  of  her  sensuous  love  for  comfort,  for  bien-etre.  He 
saw  her  again  as  she  had  been  that  night  at  the  theatre  when  they 
first  met, — the  little  crisp  black  curls  on  the  temples,  the  dazzling 
eyes,  the  artificial  pearls  round  the  neck,  the  slight  traces  of 
powder  and  rouge  on  brow  and  cheek,  which  made  her  all  the 
more  attractive  and  tempting  to  his  man's  eye — the  pretty  foot, 
which  he  first  noticed  as  she  stepped  from  the  threshold  of  the 
theatre  into  the  street.  Nature  had  made  all  that,  to  bring  her 
work  to  this  grim  bed  at  last ! 

He  himself  died  eighteen  months  afterwards.  His  acquaint- 
ances never  dreamt  of  connecting  his  death  with  his  wife's,  and 
the  connection,  if  it  existed,  would  have  been  difficult  to  trace. 
Still,  if  little  David  could  have  put  his  experiences  at  this  time 
into  words,  they  might  have  thrown  some  light  on  an  event  which 


82  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

was  certainly  a  surprise  to  the  small  world  which  took  an  interest 
in  Sandy  Grieve. 

There  was  a  certain  sound  which  remained  all  through  his  life 
firmly  fixed  in  David's  memory,  and  which  he  never  thought  of 
without  a  sense  of  desolation,  a  shiver  of  sick  dismay,  such  as 
belonged  to  no  other  association  whatever.  It  was  the  sound  of 
a  long  sigh,  brought  up,  as  it  seemed,  from  the  very  depths  of 
being,  and  often,  often  repeated.  The  thought  of  it  brought  with 
it  a  vision  of  a  small  bare  room  at  night,  with  two  iron  bedsteads, 
one  for  Louie,  one  for  himself  and  his  father ;  a  bit  of  smoulder- 
ing fire  in  a  tiny  grate,  and  beside  it  a  man's  figure  bowed  over 
the  warmth,  thrown  out  dark  against  the  distempered  wall,  and 
sitting  on  there  hour  after  hour ;  of  a  child,  wakened  intermit- 
tently by  the  light,  and  tormented  by  the  recurrent  sound,  till  it 
had  once  more  burrowed  into  the  bed-clothes  deep  enough  to  shut 
out  everything  but  sleep.  All  these  .memories  belonged  to  the 
time  immediately  following  on  Louise's  suicide.  Probably,  during 
the  interval  between  his  wife's  death  and  his  own,  Sandy  suffered 
severely  from  the  effects  of  strong  nervous  shock,  coupled  with  a 
certain  growth  of  religious  melancholy,  the  conditions  for  which 
are  rarely  wanting  in  the  true  Calvinist  blood.  Owing  to  the 
privations  and  exposure  of  his  early  manhood,  too,  it  is  possible 
that  he  was  never  in  reality  the  strong  man  he  looked.  At  any 
rate,  his  fight  for  his  life  when  it  came  was  a  singularly  weak  one. 
The  second  winter  after  Louise's  death  was  bitterly  cold  ;  he  was 
overworked,  and  often  without  sleep.  One  bleak  east-wind  day 
struck  home.  He  took  to  his  bed  with  a  chill,  which  turned  to 
peritonitis;  the  system  showed  no  power  of  resistance,  and  he 
died. 

On  the  day  but  one  before  he  died,  when  the  mortal  pain  was 
gone,  but  death  was  absolutely  certain,  he  sent  post-haste  for  his 
brother  Reuben.  Reuben  he  believed  was  married  to  a  decent 
woman,  and  to  Reuben  he  meant  to  commend  his  children. 

Reuben  arrived,  looking  more  bewildered  and  stupid  than 
ever,  pure  countryman  that  he  was,  in  this  London  which  he 
had  never  seen.  Sandy  looked  at  him  with  a  deep  inward  dis- 
satisfaction. But  what  could  he  do  ?  His  marriage  had  cut  him 
off  from  his  old  friends,  and  since  its  wreck  he  had  had  no 
energy  wherewith  to  make  new  ones. 

'  I've  never  seen  your  wife,  Reuben,'  he  said,  when  they  had 
talked  awhile. 

Reuben  was  silent  a  minute,  apparently  collecting  his 
thoughts. 

'  Naw,'  he  said  at  last ;  '  naw.  She  sent  yo  her  luve,  and 
she  hopes  iv  it's  the  Lord's  will  to  tak  yo,  that  it  ull  foind  yo 
prepared.' 

He  said  it  like  a  lesson.  A  sort  of  nervous  tremor  and  shrink- 
ing overspread  Sandy's  face.  He  had  suffered  so  much  through 
religion  during  the  last  few  months,  that  in  this  final  moment  of 
humanity  the  soul  had  taken  refuge  in  numbness — apathy.  Let 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  83 

God  decide.  He  could  think  it  out  no  more ;  and  in  this  utter 
feebleness  his  terror  of  hell — the  ineradicable  deposit  of  child- 
hood and  inheritance — had  passed  away.  He  gathered  his  forces 
for  the  few  human  and  practical  things  which  remained  to  him  to 
do. 

'  Did  she  get  on  comfortable  with  father  ? '  he  asked,  fixing 
Eeuben  with  his  eyes,  which  had  the  penetration  of  death. 

Keuben  looked  discomposed,  and  cleared  his  throat  once  or 
twice. 

'  Wai,  it  warn't  what  yo  may  call  just  coomfortable  atween 
'em.  Naw,  I'll  not  say  it  wor.' 

'  "What  was  wrong  ? '  demanded  Sandy. 

Reuben  fidgeted. 

'  Wai,'  he  said  at  last,  throwing  up  his  head  in  desperation, 
'  I  spose  a  woman  likes  her  house  to  hersel  when  she's  fust 
married.  He  wor  childish  like,  an  mighty  trooblesome  times. 
An  she's  allus  stirrin,  and  rootin,  is  Hannah.  Udder  foak  mus 
look  aloive  too.' 

The  conflict  in  Reuben's  mind  between  his  innate  truthfulness 
and  his  desire  to  excuse  his  wife  was  curious  to  see.  Sandy  had  a 
vision  of  his  father  sitting  in  his  dotage  by  his  own  hearth,  and 
ministered  to  by  a  daughter-in-law  who  grudged  him  his  years 
and  his  infirmities,  as  he  had  grudged  his  wife  all  the  trouble- 
some incidents  of  her  long  decay.  But  it  only  affected  him 
now  as  it  bore  upon  what  was  still  living  in  him,  the  one  feeling 
which  still  survived  amid  the  wreck  made  by  circumstance  and 
disease. 

'  Will  she  be  kind  to  them  ?  '  he  said  sharply,  with  a  motion  of 
the  head  towards  the  children,  first  towards  David,  who  sat  droop- 
ing on  his  father's  bed,  where  for  some  ten  or  twelve  hours  now 
he  had  remained  glued,  refusing  to  touch  either  breakfast  or 
dinner,  and  then  towards  Louie,  who  was  on  the  floor  by  the 
fire,  with  her  rag  dolls,  which  she  was  dressing  up  with  smiles 
and  chatter  in  a  strange  variety  of  finery.  '  If  not,  she  shan't 
have  'em.  There's  time  yet.' 

But  the  grey  hue  was  already  on  his  cheek,  his  feet  were 
already  cold.  The  nurse  in  the  far  corner  of  the  room,  looking 
up  as  he  spoke,  gave  him  mentally  '  an  hour  or  two. ' 

Reuben  flushed  and  sat  bolt  upright,  his  gnarled  and  wrinkled 
hands  trembling  on  his  knees. 

'  She  shall  be  kind  to  'em,'  he  said  with  energy.  '  Gie  'em 
to  us,  Sandy.  Yo  wouldna  send  your  childer  to  strangers  ? ' 

The  clannish  instinct  in  Sandy  responded.  Besides,  in  spite 
of  his  last  assertion,  he  knew  very  well  there  was  nothing  else 
to  be  done. 

'  There's  money,'  he  said  slowly.  '  She'll  not  need  to  stint  them 
of  anything.  This  is  a  poor  place,'  for  at  the  word  '  money'  he 
noticed  that  Reuben's  eyes  travelled  with  an  awakening  shrewd- 
ness over  the  barely  furnished  room;  '  but  it  was  the  debts  first, 
and  then  I  had  to  put  by  for  the  children.  None  of  the  shop-folk 


34  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

or  the  fellows  at  the  club  ever  came  here.  We  lived  as  we  liked. 
There's  an  insurance,  and  there's  some  savings,  and  there's  some 
commission  money  owing  from  the  firm,  and  there's  a  bit  invest- 
ment Mr.  Gurney  (naming  the  head  partner)  helped  me  into  last 
year.  There's  altogether  about  six  hundred  pound.  You'll  get 
the  interest  of  it  for  the  children  ;  it'll  go  into  Gurneys',  and 
they'll  give  five  per  cent,  for  it.  Mr.  Gurney's  been  very  kind. 
He  came  here  yesterday,  and  he's  got  it  all.  You  go  to  him.' 

He  stopped  for  weakness.  Reuben's  eyes  were  round.  Six 
hundred  pounds  !  Who'd  have  thought  it  of  Sandy  ? — after  that 
bad  lot  of  a  wife,  and  he  not  thirty  ! 

'  An  what  d'  yo  want  Davy  to  be,  Sandy  ? ' 

'  You  must  settle,'  said  the  father,  with  a  long  sigh.  '  Depends 
on  him — what  he  turns  to.  If  he  wants  to  farm,  he  can  learn 
with  you,  and  put  in  his  money  when  he  sees  an  opening.  For 
the  bit  farms  in  our  part  there'd  be  enough.  But  I'm  feeart '  (the 
old  Derbyshire  word  slipped  out  unawares)  '  he'll  not  stay  in  the 
country.  He's  too  sharp,  and  you  mustn't  force  him.  If  you  see 
he's  not  the  farming  sort,  when  he's  thirteen  or  fourteen  or  so, 
take  Mr.  Gurney's  advice,  and  bind  him  to  a  trade.  Mr.  Gurney 
'11  pay  the  premiums  for  him  and  he  can  have  the  balance  of  the 
money — for  I've  left  him  to  manage  it  all,  for  himself  and  Louie 
too — when  he's  fit  to  set  up  for  himself. — You  and  Hannah  '11  deal 
honest  wi  'em  ? ' 

The  question  was  unexpected,  and  as  he  put  it  with  a  startling 
energy  the  dying  man  raised  himself  on  his  elbow,  and  looked 
sharply  at  his  brother. 

'  D'  yo  think  I'd  cheat  yo,  or  your  childer,  Sandy  ? '  cried 
Reuben,  flushing  and  pricked  to  the  heart. 

Sandy  sank  back  again,  his  sudden  qualm  appeased.  '  No,' 
he  said,  his  thoughts  returning  painfully  to  his  son.  '  I'm  feeart 
he'll  not  stay  wi  you.  He's  cleverer  than  I  ever  was,  and  I  was 
the  cleverest  of  us  all.' 

The  words  had  in  them  a  whole  epic  of  human  fate.  Under 
the  prick  of  them  Reuben  found  a  tongue,  not  now  for  his  wife, 
but  for  himself. 

'  It's  not  cliverness  as  ull  help  yo  now,  Sandy,  wi  your  Maaker  ! 
and  yo  feeace  t'  feeace  wi  'un  ! '  he  cried.  '  It's  nowt  but  satis- 
facshun  by  t'  blood  o'  Jesus  ! ' 

Sandy  made  no  answer,  unless,  indeed,  the  poor  heart  within 
made  its  last  cry  of  agony  to  heaven  at  the  words.  The  sinews  of 
the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  physical  man  were  all  spent  and 
useless. 

'  Davy,'  he  called  presently.  The  child,  who  had  been  sitting 
motionless  during  this  talk  watching  his  father,  slid  along  the  bed 
with  alacrity,  and  tucking  his  little  legs  and  feet  well  away  from 
Sandy's  long  frame,  put  his  head  down  on  the  pillow.  His  father 
turned  his  eyes  to  him,  and  with  a  solemn,  lingering  gaze  took  in 
the  childish  face,  the  thick,  tumbled  hair,  the  expression,  so 
piteous,  yet  so  intelligent.  Then  he  put  up  his  own  large  hand, 


CHAP.  IV  CHILDHOOD  85 

and  took  both  the  boy's  into  its  cold  and  feeble  grasp.  His 
eyelids  fell,  and  the  breathing  changed.  The  nurse  hurriedly 
rose,  lifted  up  Louie  from  her  toys,  and  put  her  on  the  bed  beside 
him.  The  child,  disturbed  in  her  play  and  frightened  by  she 
knew  not  what,  set  up  a  sudden  cry.  A  tremor  seemed  to  pass 
through  the  shut  lids  at  the  sound,  a  slight  compression  of  pain 
appeared  in  the  grey  lips.  It  was  Sandy  Grieve's  last  sign  of  life. 

Keuben  Grieve  remembered  well  the  letter  he  had  written  to 
his  wife,  with  infinite  difficulty,  from  beside  his  brother's  dead 
body.  He  told  her  that  he  was  bringing  the  children  back  with 
him.  The  poor  bairns  had  got  nobody  in  the  world  to  look  to  but 
their  uncle  and  aunt.  And  they  would  not  cost  Hannah  a  penny. 
For  Mr.  Gurney  would  pay  thirty  pounds  a  year  for  their  keep 
and  bringing  up. 

With  what  care  and  labour  his  clumsy  fingers  had  penned  that 
last  sentence  so  that  Hannah  might  read  it  plain  I 

Afterwards  he  brought  the  children  home.  As  he  drove  his 
light  cart  up  the  rough  and  lonely  road  to  Needham  Farm,  Louie 
cried  with  the  cold  and  the  dark,  and  Davy,  with  his  hands  tucked 
between  his  knees,  grew  ever  more  and  more  silent,  his  restless 
little  head  turning  perpetually  from  side  to  side,  as  though  he 
were  trying  to  discover  something  of  the  strange,  new  world  to 
which  he  had  been  brought,  through  the  gloom  of  the  February 
evening. 

Then  at  the  sound  of  wheels  outside  in  the  lane,  the  back  door 
of  the  farm  was  opened,  and  a  dark  figure  stood  on  the  threshold. 

'Yo're  late,'  Reuben  heard.  It  was  Hannah's  piercing  voice 
that  spoke.  '  Bring  'em  into  t'  back  kitchen,  an  let  'em  take  their 
shoes  off  afore  they  coom  ony  further.' 

By  which  Reuben  knew  that  it  had  been  scrubbing-day,  and 
that  her  flagstones  were  more  in  Hannah's  mind  than  the  guests 
he  had  brought  her.  He  obeyed,  and  then  the  barefooted  trio 
entered  the  fi-ont  kitchen  together.  Hannah  came  forward  and 
looked  at  the  children — at  David  white  and  blinking — at  the  four- 
year-old  Louie,  bundled  up  in  an  old  shawl,  which  dragged  on  the 
ground  behind  her,  and  staring  wildly  round  her  at  the  old 
low-roofed  kitchen  with  the  terror  of  the  trapped  bird. 

'Hannah,  they're  varra  cold,'  said  Reuben — 'ha  yo  got 
summat  hot  ? ' 

'  Theer'll  be  supper  bime-by,'  Hannah  replied  with  decision. 
'  I've  naw  time  scrubbin-days  to  be  foolin  about  wi  things  out  o' 
hours.  I've  nobbut  just  got  straight  and  cleaned  mysel.  They 
can  sit  down  and  warm  theirsels.  I  conno  say  they  feature  ony 
of  yor  belongins,  Reuben.'  And  she  went  to  put  Louie  on  the 
settle  by  the  fire.  But  as  the  tall  woman  in  black  approached 
her,  the  child  hit  out  madly  with  her  small  fists  and  burst  into  a 
loud  howl  of  crying. 

'  Get  away,  nasty  woman  1  Nasty  woman — ugly  woman  I 
Take  me  away — I  want  my  daddy, — I  want  my  daddy.' 


86  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

And  she  threw  herself  kicking  on  the  floor,  while,  to  Hannah's 
exasperation,  a  piece  of  crumbling  bun  she  had  been  holding  tight 
in  her  sticky  little  hand  escaped  and  littered  all  the  new-washed 
stones. 

'  Tak  yor  niece  oop,  Reuben,  an  mak  her  behave ' — the  mistress 
of  the  house  commanded  angrily.  '  She'll  want  a  stick  takken  to 
her,  soon,  /can  see.' 

Reuben  obeyed  so  far  as  he  could,  but  Louie's  shrieks  only 
ceased  when,  by  the  combined  efforts  of  husband  and  wife,  she 
had  been  put  to  bed,  so  exhausted  with  rage,  excitement,  and  the 
journey,  that  sleep  mercifully  took  possession  of  her  just  after  she 
had  performed  the  crowning  feat  of  knocking  the  tea  and  bread 
and  butter  Reuben  brought  her  out  of  her  uncle's  hand  and  all 
over  the  room. 

Meanwhile,  David  sat  perfectly  still  in  a  chair  against  the  wall, 
beside  the  old  clock,  and  stared  about  him ;  at  the  hams  and 
bunches  of  dried  herbs  hanging  from  the  ceiling  ;  at  the  chiffon- 
nier,  with  its  red  baize  doors  under  a  brass  trellis-work  ;  at  the 
high  wooden  settle,  the  framed  funeral  cards,  and  the  two  or  three 
coloured  prints,  now  brown  with  age,  which  Reuben  had  hung  up 
twenty  years  before,  to  celebrate  his  marriage.  Hannah  was 
propitiated  by  the  boy's  silence,  and  as  she  got  supper  ready  she 
once  or  twice  noticed  his  fine  black  eyes  and  his  curly  hair. 

'Yo  can  coom  an  get  yor  supper,'  she  said  to  him,  more 
graciously  than  she  had  spoken  yet.  '  It's  a  mussy  yo  doant  goo 
skrikin  like  your  sister.' 

'  Thank  you,  ma'am,'  said  the  little  fellow,  with  a  townsman's 
politeness,  hardly  understanding,  however,  a  word  of  her  north- 
country  dialect — '  I'm  not  hungry. — You've  got  a  picture  of 
General  Washington  there,  ma'am ; '  and,  raising  a  small  hand 
trembling  with  nervousness  and  fatigue,  he  pointed  to  one  of  the 
prints  opposite. 

'  Wai,  I  niver,'  said  Hannah,  with  a  stare  of  astonishment. 
'  Yo're  a  quare  lot — the  two  o'  yer.' 

One  thing  more  Reuben  remembered  with  some  vividness  in 
connection  with  the  children's  arrival.  When  they  were  both  at 
last  asleep — Louie  in  an  unused  room  at  the  back,  on  an  old 
wooden  bedstead,  which  stood  solitary  in  a  wilderness  of  bare 
boards ;  David  in  a  sort  of  cupboard  off  the  landing,  which  got 
most  of  its  light  and  air  from  a  wooden  trellis-work,  overlooking 
the  staircase — Hannah  said  abruptly  to  her  husband,  as  they  two 
were  going  to  bed,  '  When  ull  Mr.  Gurney  pay  that  money  ? ' 

'  Twice  a  year — so  his  clerk  towd  ine — Christmas  an  Mid- 
summer. Praps  we  shan't  want  to  use  it  aw,  Hannah ;  praps  we 
might  save  soom  on  it  for  t'  childer.  Their  keep,  iv  yo  feed  em 
on  parritch,  is  nobbut  a  fleabite,  an  they'n  got  a  good  stock  o' 
cloos,  Sandy's  nurse  towd  me.' 

He  looked  anxiously  at  Hannah.  In  his  inmost  heart  there 
was  a  passionate  wish  to  do  his  duty  to  Sandy's  orphans,  fighting 


CHAP.  IV  CHILDHOOD  37 

with  a  dread  of  his  wife,  which  was  the  fruit  of  long  habit  and 
constitutional  weakness. 

Hannah  faced  round  upon  him.  It  was  Eeuben's  misfortune 
that  dignity  was  at  all  times  impossible  to  him.  Now,  as  he  sat 
in  his  shirt-sleeves  and  stocking-feet,  flushed  with  the  exertion  of 
pulling  off  his  heavy  boots,  the  light  of  the  tallow  candle  falling 
on  his  weak  eyes  with  their  red  rims,  on  his  large  open  mouth 
with  the  conspicuous  gap  in  its  front  teeth,  and  his  stubby  hair, 
he  was  more  than  usually  grotesque.  '  As  slamp  an  wobbly  as  an 
owd  corn-boggart,'  so  his  neighbours  described  him  when  they 
wished  to  be  disrespectful,  and  the  simile  fitted  very  closely  with 
the  dishevelled,  disjointed  appearance  which  was  at  all  times 
characteristic  of  him,  Sundays  or  weekdays.  No  one  studying 
the  pair,  especially  at  such  a  moment  as  this — the  malaise  of  the 
husband — the  wife  towering  above  him,  her  grey  hair  hanging 
loose  round  her  black  brows  and  sallow  face  instinct  with  a 
rugged  and  indomitable  energy — could  have  doubted  in  whose 
hands  lay  the  government  of  Needham  Farm. 

'  I'll  thank  yo  not  to  talk  nonsense,  Reuben  Grieve,'  said  his 
wife  sharply.  '  D'yo  think  they're  my  flesh  an  blood,  thoose 
childer  ?  An  who'll  ha  to  do  for  'em  but  me,  I  should  loike  to 
know  ?  Who'll  ha  to  put  up  wi  their  messin  an  their  dirt  but 
me  ?  Twenty  year  ha  yo  an  I  been  married,  Reuben,  an  niver 
till  this  neet  did  I  ha  to  goo  down  on  my  knees  an  sweep  oop 
after  scrubbin-day  !  Iv  I'm  to  be  moidered  wi  em,  I'll  be  paid 
for  't.  Soa  I  let  yo  know — it's  little  enough.' 

And  Hannah  took  her  payment.  As  he  sat  in  the  sun,  looking 
back  on  the  last  seven  years,  with  a  slow  and  dreaming  mind, 
Reuben  recognised,  using  his  own  phrases  for  the  matter,  that  the 
children's  thirty  pounds  had  been  the  pivot  of  Hannah's  existence. 
He  was  but  a  small  sheep  farmer,  with  very  scanty  capital.  By 
dint  of  hard  work  and  painful  thrift,  the  childless  pair  had 
earned  a  sufficient  living  in  the  past — nay,  even  put  by  a  b't,  if 
the  truth  of  Hannah's  savings-bank  deposits  were  known.  But 
every  fluctuation  in  their  small  profits  tried  them  sorely — tried 
Hannah  especially,  whose  temper  was  of  the  brooding  and  grasp- 
ing order.  The  certainty  of  Mr.  Gurney's  cheques  made  them 
very  soon  the  most  cheerful  facts  in  the  farm  life.  On  two  days 
in  the  year — the  20th  of  June  and  the  20th  of  December — Reuben 
might  be  sure  of  finding  his  wife  in  a  good  temper,  and  he  had 
long  shrewdly  suspected,  without  inquiring,  that  Hannah's  sav- 
ings-bank book,  since  the  children  came,  had  been  very  pleasant 
reading  to  her. 

Reuben  fidgeted  uncomfortably  as  he  thought  of  those  savings. 
Certainly  the  children  had  not  cost  what  was  paid  for  them.  He 
began  to  be  oddly  exercised  this  Sunday  morning  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  porridge  Louie  hated  so  much.  Was  it  his  fault  or 
Hannah's  if  the  frugal  living  which  had  been  the  rule  for  all  the 
remoter  farms  of  the  Peak — nay,  for  the  whole  north  country — 


38  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

in  his  father's  time,  and  had  been  made  doubly  binding,  as  it 
were,  on  the  dwellers  in  Needham  Farm  by  James  Grieve's  Scotch 
blood  and  habits,  had  survived  under  their  roof,  while  all  about 
them  a  more  luxurious  standard  of  food  and  comfort  was  begin- 
ning to  obtain  among  their  neighbours  ?  Where  could  you  find  a 
finer  set  of  men  than  the  Berwickshire  hinds,  of  whom  his  father 
came,  and  who  were  reared  on  '  parritch '  from  year's  end  to  year's 
end? 

And  yet,  all  the  same,  Reuben's  memory  was  full  this  morning 
of  disturbing  pictures  of  a  little  London  child,  full  of  town  dainti- 
ness and  accustomed  to  the  spoiling  of  an  indulgent  father,  crying 
herself  into  fits  over  the  new  unpalatable  food,  refusing  it  day 
after  day,  till  the  sharp,  wilful  face  had  grown  pale  and  pinched 
with  famine,  and  caring  no  more  apparently  for  her  aunt's  beat- 
ings than  she  did  for  the  clumsy  advances  by  which  her  uncle 
would  sometimes  try  to  propitiate  her.  There  had  been  a  great 
deal  of  beating — whenever  Reuben  thought  of  it  he  had  a  super- 
stitious way  of  putting  Sandy  out  of  his  mind  as  much  as  possible. 
Many  times  he  had  gone  far  away  from  the  house  to  avoid  the 
sound  of  the  blows  and  shrieks  he  was  powerless  to  stop. 

Well,  but  what  harm  had  come  of  it  all  ?  Louie  was  a  strong 
lass  now,  if  she  were  a  bit  thin  and  overgrown.  David  was  as 
fine  a  boy  as  anyone  need  wish  to  see. 

David  ? 

Reuben  got  up  from  his  seat  at  the  farm  door,  took  his  pipe 
out  of  his  pocket,  and  went  to  hang  over  the  garden-gate,  that  he 
might  unravel  some  very  worrying  thoughts  at  a  greater  distance 
from  Hannah. 

The  day  before  he  had  been  overtaken  coming  out  of  Clough 
End  by  Mr.  Ancrum,  the  lame  minister.  He  and  Grieve  liked 
one  another.  If  there  had  been  intrigues  raised  against  the 
minister  within  the  'Christian  Brethren'  congregation,  Reuben 
Grieve  had  taken  no  part  in  them. 

After  some  general  conversation,  Mr.  Ancrum  suddenly  said, 
'  Will  you  let  me  have  a  word  with  you,  Mr.  Grieve,  about  your 
nephew  David — if  you'll  not  think  me  intruding  ? ' 

'Say  on,  sir — say  on,'  said  Reuben  hastily,  but  with  an  inward 
shrinking. 

'  Well,  Mr.  Grieve,  you've  got  a  remarkable  boy  there — a  curi- 
ous and  remarkable  boy.  What  are  you  going  to  do  with  him  ? ' 

'Do  wi  him? — me,  sir?  Wai,  I  doan't  know  as  I've  iver 
thowt  mich  about  it,'  said  Reuben,  but  with  an  agitation  of 
manner  that  struck  his  interrogator.  '  He  be  varra  useful  to 
me  on  t'  farm,  Mr.  Ancrum.  Soom  toimes  i'  t'  year  theer's  a 
lot  doin,  yo  knaw,  sir,  even  on  a  bit  place  like  ours,  and  he  ha 
gitten  a  good  schoolin,  he  ha.' 

The  apologetic  incoherence  of  the  little  speech  was  curious. 
Mr.  Ancrum  did  not  exactly  know  how  to  take  his  man. 

'  I  dare  say  he's  useful.  But  he's  not  going  to  be  the  ordi- 
nary labourer,  Mr.  Grieve — he's  made  of  quite  different  stuff,  and, 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  89 

if  I  may  say  so,  it  will  pay  you  very  well  to  recognise  it  in  good 
time.  That  boy  will  read  books  now  which  hardly  any  grown 
man  of  his  class — about  here,  at  any  rate — would  be  able  to  read. 
Aye,  and  talk  about  them,  too,  in  a  way  to  astonish  you  ! ' 

'  Yes,  I  know  'at  he's  oncommon  cliver  wi  his  books,  is  Davy,  • 
Keuben  admitted. 

'  Oh  !  it's  not  only  that.  But  he's  got  an  unusual  brain  and 
a  wonderful  memory.  And  it  would  be  a  thousand  pities  if  he 
were  to  make  nothing  of  them.  You  say  he's  useful,  but — excuse 
me,  Mr.  Grieve — he  seems  to  me  to  spend  three  parts  of  his  time 
in  loafing  and  desultory  reading.  He  wants  more  teaching — he 
wants  steady  training.  Why  don't  you  send  him  to  Manchester,' 
said  the  minister  boldly,  '  and  apprentice  him  ?  It  costs  money, 
no  doubt.' 

And  he  looked  interrogatively  at  Keuben.  Reuben,  however, 
said  nothing.  They  were  toiling  up  the  steep  road  from  dough 
End  to  the  high  farms  under  the  Scout,  a  road  which  tried  the 
minister's  infirm  limb  severely  ;  otherwise  he  would  have  taken 
more  notice  of  his  companion's  awkward  flush  and  evident  dis- 
composure. 

'But  it  would  pay  you  in  the  long  run,'  he  said,  when  they 
stopped  to  take  breath  ;  '  it  would  be  a  capital  investment  if  the 
boy  lives,  I  promise  you  that,  Mr.  Grieve.  And  he  could  carry 
on  his  education  there,  too,  a  bit — what  with  evening  classes  and 
lectures,  and  the  different  libraries  he  could  get  the  use  of.  It's 
wonderful  how  all  the  facilities  for  working-class  education  have 
grown  in  Manchester  during  the  last  few  years.' 

'  Aye,  sir — I  spose  they  have — I  spose  they  have,'  said  Reuben, 
uncomfortably,  and  then  seemed  incapable  of  carrying  on  the 
conversation  any  further.  Mr.  Ancrum  talked,  but  nothing  more 
was  to  be  got  out  of  the  farmer.  At  last  the  minister  turned 
back,  saying,  as  he  shook  hands,  '  Well,  let  me  know  if  I  can  be 
of  any  use.  I  have  a  good  many  friends  in  Manchester.  I  tell 
you  that's  a  boy  to  be  proud  of,  Mr.  Grieve,  a  boy  of  promise,  if 
ever  there  was  one.  But  he  wants  taking  the  right  way.  He's 
got  plenty  of  mixed  stuff  in  him,  bad  and  good.  I  should  feel  it 
anxious  work,  the  next  few  years,  if  he  were  my  boy.' 

Now  it  was  really  this  talk  which  was  fermenting  in  Reuben, 
and  which,  together  with  the  '  rumpus '  between  Hannah  and 
Louie,  had  led  to  his  singularly  disturbed  state  of  conscience  this 
Sunday  morning.  As  he  stood,  miserably  pulling  at  his  pipe,  the 
whole  prospect  of  sloping  field,  and  steep  distant  moor,  gradually 
vanished  from  his  eyes,  and,  instead,  he  saw  the  same  London 
room  which  David's  memory  held  so  tenaciously — he  saw  Sandy 
raising  himself  from  his  deathbed  with  that  look  of  sudden  dis- 
trust— '  Now,  you'll  deal  honest  wi  'em,  Reuben  ?' 

Reuben  groaned  in  spirit.  '  A  boy  to  be  proud  of '  indeed. 
It  seemed  to  him,  now  that  he  was  perforce  made  to  think  about 
it,  that  he  had  never  been  easy  in  his  mind  since  Sandy's  orphans 
came  to  the  house.  On  the  one  hand,  his  wife  had  had  her  way 


40  THE  HISTORY   OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

— how  was  he  to  prevent  it  ?  On  the  other,  his  religious  sense 
had  kept  pricking  and  tormenting — like  the  gadfly  that  it 
was. 

Who,  in  the  name  of  fortune,  was  to  ask  Hannah  for  money 
to  send  the  boy  to  Manchester  and  apprentice  him  ?  And  who 
was  going  to  write  to  Mr.  Gurney  about  it  without  her  leave  ? 
Once  upset  the  system  of  things  on  which  those  two  half-yearly 
cheques  depended,  how  many  more  of  them  would  be  forth- 
coming ?  And  how  was  Hannah  going  to  put  up  with  the  loss 
of  them  ?  It  made  Reuben  shiver  to  think  of  it. 

Shouts  from  the  lane  behind.  Reuben  suddenly  raised  him- 
self and  made  for  the  gate  at  the  corner  of  the  farmyard.  He 
came  out  upon  the  children,  who  had  been  to  Sunday  school  at 
Clough  End  since  dinner,  and  were  now  in  consequence  in  a  state 
of  restless  animal  spirits.  Louie  was  swinging  violently  on  the 
gate  which  barred  the  path  on  to  the  moor.  David  was  shying 
stones  at  a  rook's  nest  opposite,  the  clatter  of  the  outraged  colony 
to  which  it  belonged  sounding  as  music  in  his  ears. 

They  stared  when  they  saw  Reuben  cross  the  road,  sit  down 
on  a  stone  beside  David,  and  take  out  his  pipe.  David  ceased 
throwing,  and  Louie,  crossing  her  feet  and  steadying  herself  as 
she  sat  on  the  topmost  bar  of  the  gate  by  a  grip  on  either  side, 
leant  hard  on  her  hands  and  watched  her  uncle  in  silence.  When 
caught  unawares  by  their  elders,  these  two  had  always  something 
of  the  air  of  captives  defending  themselves  in  an  alien  country. 

'  Wai,  Davy,  did  tha  have  Mr.  Ancrum  in  school  ? '  began 
Reuben,  affecting  a  brisk  manner,  oddly  unlike  him. 

'  Naw.  It  wor  Brother  Winterbotham  from  Halifax,  or  soom 
sich  name.' 

'  Wor  he  edify  in,  Davy  ?' 

'He  wor — he  wor — a  leather-yed,'  said  David,  with  sudden 
energy,  and,  taking  up  a  stone  again,  he  flung  it  at  a  tree  trunk 
opposite,  with  a  certain  vindictiveness  as  though  Brother  Winter- 
botham were  sitting  there. 

'  Now,  yo're  not  speakin  as  yo  owt,  Davy,'  said  Reuben 
reprovingly,  as  he  puffed  away  at  his  pipe  and  felt  the  pleasant- 
ness of  the  spring  sunshine  which  streamed  down  into  the  lane 
through  the  still  bare  but  budding  branches  of  the  sycamores. 

'  He  wor  a  leather-yed,'  David  repeated  with  emphasis.  '  He 
said  it  wor  Alexander  fought  t1  battle  o'  Marathon.' 

Reuben  was  silent  for  a  while.  When  tests  of  this  kind  were 
going,  he  could  but  lie  low.  However,  David's  answer,  after  a 
bit,  suggested  an  opening  to  him. 

'  Yo've  a  rare  deal  o'  book-larnin  for  a  farmin  lad,  Davy.  If 
yo  wor  at  a  trade  now,  or  a  mill-hand,  or  summat  o'  that  soart, 
yo'd  ha  noan  so  mich  time  for  readin  as  yo  ha  now. ' 

The  boy  looked  at  him  askance,  with  his  keen  black  eyes.  His 
uncle  puzzled  him. 

'  Wai,  I'm  not  a  mill-hand,  onyways,'  he  said,  shortly,  'an  I 
doan't  mean  to  be.' 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  41 

'Nba,  yo're  too  lazy,'  said  Louie  shrilly,  from  the  top  of  the 
gate.  '  Theer's  heaps  o'  boys  no  bigger  nor  yo,  arns  their  ten 
shillins  a  week.' 

'  They're  welcome,'  said  David  laconically,  throwing  another 
stone  at  the  water  to  keep  his  hand  in.  For  some  years  now  the 
boy  had  cherished  a  hatred  of  the  mill-life  on  which  Clough  End 
and  the  other  small  towns  and  villages  in  the  neighbourhood  ex- 
isted. The  thought  of  the  long  monotonous  hours  at  the  mules  or 
the  looms  was  odious  to  the  lad  whose  joys  lay  in  free  moorland 
wanderings  with  the  sheep,  in  endless  reading,  in  talks  with  'Lias 
Dawson. 

'  Wai,  now,  I'm  real  glad  to  heer  yo  say  sich  things,  Davy,  lad,' 
said  Reuben,  with  a  curious  nutter  of  manner.  '  I'm  real  glad. 
So  yo  take  to  the  farmin,  Davy  ?  "Wai,  it's  nateral.  All  yor 
forbears — all  on  em  leastways,  nobbut  yor  feyther — got  their  livin 
off  t'  land.  It  cooms  nateral  to  a  Grieve. ' 

The  boy  made  no  answer — did  not  commit  himself  in  any  way. 
He  went  on  absently  throwing  stones. 

'  Why  doan't  he  larn  a  trade  ? '  demanded  Louie.  '  Theer's 
Harry  Wigson,  he's  gone  to  Manchester  to  be  prenticed.  He 
doan't  goo  loafin  round  aw  day. ' 

Her  sharp  wits  disconcerted  Reuben.  He  looked  anxiously  at 
David.  The  boy  coloured  furiously,  and  cast  an  angry  glance  at 
his  sister. 

'  Theer's  money  wanted  for  prenticin,'  he  said  shortly. 

Reuben  felt  a  stab.  Neither  of  the  children  knew  that  they 
possessed  a  penny.  A  blunt  word  of  Hannah's  first  of  all,  about 
'  not  gien  'em  ony  high  noshuns  o1  theirsels,'  aided  on  Reuben's 
side  by  the  natural  secretiveness  of  the  peasant  in  money  affairs, 
had  effectually  concealed  all  knowledge  of  their  own  share  in  the 
family  finances  from  the  orphans. 

He  reached  out  a  soil-stained  hand,  shaking  already  with 
incipient  age,  and  laid  it  on  David's  sleeve. 

'  Art  tha  hankerin  after  a  trade,  lad  ? '  he  said  hastily,  nay, 
harshly. 

David  looked  at  his  uncle  astonished.  A  hundred  thoughts 
flew  through  the  boy's  mind.  Then  he  raised  his  head  and  caught 
sight  of  the  great  peak  of  Kinder  Low  in  the  distance,  beyond  the 
green  swells  of  meadowland, — the  heathery  slopes  running  up 
into  its  rocky  breast, — the  black  patch  on  the  brown,  to  the  left, 
which  marked  the  site  of  the  smithy. 

'  No,'  he  said  decidedly.  '  No  ;  I  can't  say  as  I  am.  I  like  t' 
farmin  well  enough.' 

And  then,  boy -like,  hating  to  be  talked  to  about  himself,  he 
shook  himself  free  of  his  uncle  and  walked  away.  Reuben  fell  to 
his  pipe  again  with  a  beaming  countenance. 

'  Louie,  my  gell,'  he  said. 

'  Yes,'  said  the  child,  not  moving. 

'  Coom  yo  heer,  Louie.' 

She  unwillingly  got  down  and  came  up  to  him. 


42  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

Reuben  put  down  his  pipe,  and  fumbled  in  his  waistcoat 
pocket.  Out  of  it,  with  difficulty,  he  produced  a  sixpence. 

'  Art  tha  partial  to  goodies,  Louie  ? '  he  said,  dropping  his  voice 
almost  to  a  whisper,  and  holding  up  the  coin  before  her. 

Louie  nodded,  her  eyes  glistening  at  the  magnitude  of  the  coin. 
Uncle  Reuben  might  be  counted  on  for  a  certain  number  of 
pennies  during  the  year,  but  silver  was  unheard  of. 

'  Tak  it  then,  child,  an  welcome.  If  yo  have  a  sweet  tooth — 
an  it's  t'  way  wi  moast  gells — I  conno  see  as  it  can  be  onythin 
else  but  Providence  as  gave  it  yo.  So  get  yorsel  soom  bull's-eyes, 
Louie,  an — an ' — he  looked  a  little  conscious  as  he  slipped  the  coin 
into  her  eager  hand — '  doan't  let  on  ti  your  aunt !  She'd  think 
mebbe  I  wor  spoilin  your  teeth,  or  summat, — an,  Louie — 

Was  Uncle  Reuben  gone  mad  ?  For  the  first  time  in  her  life, 
as  it  seemed  to  Louie,  he  was  looking  at  what  she  had  on,  nay, 
was  even  taking  up  her  dress  between  his  finger  and  thumb. 

'  Is  thissen  your  Sunday  frock,  chilt  ? ' 

'Yes,'  said  the  girl,  flushing  scarlet,  'bean't  it  a  dish- 
clout?' 

And  she  stood  looking  down  at  it  with  passionate  scorn.  It 
was  a  worn  and  patched  garment  of  brown  alpaca,  made  out  of  an 
ancient  gown  of  Hannah's. 

'  Wai,  I'm  naw  judge  i'  these  matters,'  said  Reuben,  dubiously, 
drawing  out  his  spectacles.  '  It's  got  naw  holes  'at  I  can  see,  but 
it's  not  varra  smart,  perhaps.  Satan's  varra  active  wi  gells  on 
this  pint  o'  dress — yo  mun  tak  noatice  o'  that,  Louie — but— listen 
heer— ' 

And  he  drew  her  nearer  to  him  by  her  skirt,  looking  cautiously 
up  and  down  the  lane  and  across  to  the  farm. 

'  If  I  get  a  good  price  for  t'  wool  this  year — an  theer's  a  new 
merchant  coomin  round,  yan  moor  o'  t'  buyin  soart  nor  owd 
Croker,  soa  they  say,  I'st  save  yo  five  shillin  for  a  frock,  chilt. 
Yo  can  goo  an  buy  it,  an  I'st  mak  it  straight  wi  yor  aunt.  But  I 
mun  get  a  good  price,  yo  know,  or  your  aunt  ull  be  fearfu'  bad  to 
manage. ' 

And  he  gazed  up  at  her  as  though  appealing  to  her  common 
sense  in  the  matter,  and  to  her  understanding  of  both  his  and  her 
situation.  Louie's  cheeks  were  red,  her  eyes  did  not  meet  his. 
They  looked  away,  down  towards  Clough  End. 

'Theer's  a  blue  cotton  at  Hinton's,'  she  said,  hurriedly— '  a 
light-blue  cotton.  They  want  sixpence  farthin, — but  Annie  Wig- 
son  says  yo  could  bate  'em  a  bit.  But  what's  t'  use  ? '  she  added, 
with  a  sudden  savage  darkening  of  her  bright  look — '  she'd  tak  it 
away. ' 

The  tone  gave  Reuben  a  shock.  But  he  did  not  rebuke  it. 
For  the  first  time  he  and  Louie  were  conspirators  in  the  same 
plot. 

'  Xo,  no,  I'd  see  to  'at.  But  how  ud  yo  get  it  made  ? '  lie  was 
beginning  to  feel  a  childish  interest  in  his  scheme. 

'  Me  an  Annie  Wigson  ud  mak  it  oop  fast  enough.     Theer  are 


CHAP,  iv  CHILDHOOD  43 

things  I  can  do  for  her  ;  she'd  not  want  no  payin,  an  she's  fearfu' 
good  at  dressmakin.  She  wor  prenticed  two  years  afore  she  took 
ill.' 

'  Gie  me  a  kiss  then,  my  gell ;  doan't  yo  gie  naw  trooble,  an 
we'st  see.  But  I  mun  get  a  good  price,  yo  know. ' 

And  rising,  Reuben  bent  towards  his  niece.  She  rose  on  tip- 
toe, and  just  touched  his  rough  cheek.  There  was  no  natural 
childish  effusiveness  in  the  action.  For  the  seven  years  since  she 
left  her  father,  Louie  had  quite  unlearnt  kissing. 

Reuben  proceeded  up  the  lane  to  the  gate  leading  to  the  moor. 
He  was  in  the  highest  spirits.  What  a  mercy  he  had  not  bothered 
Hannah  with  Mr.  Ancrum's  remarks  !  Why,  the  boy  wouldn't  go 
to  a  trade,  not  if  he  were  sent ! 

At  the  gate  he  ran  against  David,  who  came  hastily  out  of  the 
farmyard  to  intercept  him. 

'  Uncle  Reuben,  what  do  they  coe  that  bit  watter  up  theer  ? ' 
and  he  pointed  up  the  lane  towards  the  main  ridge  of  the  Peak. 
'  Yo  know — that  bit  pool  on  t'  way  to  th'  Downfall  ? ' 

The  farmer  stopped  bewildered. 

'  That  bit  watter  ?  What  they  coe  that  bit  watter  ?  Why,  they 
coe  it  t'  Witch's  Pool,  or  used  to  i'  my  yoong  days.  An  for  varra 
good  reason  too.  They  drownded  an  owd  witch  theer  i'  my  grand- 
feyther's  time — I've  heerd  my  grandmither  tell  th'  tale  on't  scores 
o'  times.  An  theer's  aw  mak  o'  tales  about  it,  or  used  to  be.  I 
hannot  yeerd  mony  words  about  it  o'  late  years.  Who's  been 
talkin  to  yo,  Davy  ? ' 

Louie  came  running  up  and  listened. 

'  I  doan't  know,'  said  the  boy, — '  what  soart  o'  tales  ? ' 

'  Why,  they'd  use  to  say  th'  witch  walked,  on  soom  neets  i'  th' 
year — Easter  Eve,  most  pertickerlerly — an  foak  wor  feeart  to  goo 
onywhere  near  it  on  those  neets.  But  doan't  yo  goo  listenin  to 
tales,  Davy,'  said  Reuben,  with  a  paternal  effusion  most  rare  with 
him,  and  born  of  his  recent  proceedings  ;  '  yo'll  only  f  reeten  yorsel 
o'  neets  for  nothin.' 

'  What  are  witches  ?'  demanded  Louie,  scornfully.  '  I  doan't 
bleeve  in  'em.' 

Reuben  frowned  a  little. 

'  Theer  wor  witches  yance,  my  gell,  becos  it's  in  th'  Bible,  an 
whativer's  in  th'  Bible's  true,1  and  the  farmer  brought  his  hand 
down  on  the  top  bar  of  the  gate.  '  I'm  no  gien  ony  judgment 
about  'em  nowadays.  Theer  wor  aw  mak  o'  queer  things  said 
about  Jenny  Crum  an  Needham  Farm  i'  th'  owd  days.  I've  heerd 
my  grandmither  say  it  worn't  worth  a  Christian  man's  while  to 
live  in  Needham  Farm  when  Jenny  Crum  wor  about.  She  med- 
dled wi  everythin — wi  his  lambs,  an  his  coos,  an  his  childer.  I 
niver  seed  nothin  mysel,  so  I  doan't  say  nowt — not  o'  my  awn 
knowledge.  But  I  doan't  soomhow  bleeve  as  it's  th'  Awmighty's 
will  to  freeten  a  Christian  coontry  wi  witches,  i1  W  present  dis- 
pensation. An  murderin's  a  graat  sin,  wheder  it's  witches  or 
oother  foak.' 


44  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

'In  t'  books  they  doan't  coe  it  t'  "Witch's  Pool  at  aw,'  said 
Louie,  obstinately.  '  They  coe  it  t'  Mermaid's  Pool.' 

'  An  anoother  book  coes  it  a  "  Hammer-dry-ad," '  said  David, 
mockingly,  '  soa  theer  yo  are.' 

'  Aye,  soom  faddlin  kind  of  a  name  they  gie  it — I  know — 
those  Manchester  chaps,  as  cooms  trespassin  ower  t'  Scout  wheer 
they  aren't  wanted.  To  hear  ony  yan  o'  them  talk,  yo'd  think 
theer  wor  only  three  fellows  like  'im  cam  ower  i'  three  ships,  an 
two  were  drownded.  T'aint  ov  ony  account  what  they  an  their 
books  coe  it.' 

And  Reuben,  as  he  leant  against  the  gate,  blew  his  smoke 
contemptuously  in  the  air.  It  was  not  often  that  Reuben  Grieve 
allowed  himself,  or  was  allowed  by  his  world,  to  use  airs  of 
superiority  towards  any  other  human  being  whatever.  But  in 
the  case  of  the  Manchester  clerks  and  warehousemen,  who  came 
tramping  over  the  grouse  moors  which  Reuben  rented  for  his 
sheep,  and  were  always  being  turned  back  by  keepers  or  himself 
— and  in  their  case  only — did  he  exercise,  once  in  a  while,  the 
commonest  privilege  of  humanity. 

'  Did  yo  iver  know  onybody  'at  went  up  on  Easter  Eve  ? ' 
asked  David. 

Both  children  hung  on  the  answer. 

Reuben  scratched  his  head.  The  tales  of  Jenny  Crum,  once 
well  known  to  him,  had  sunk  deep  into  the  waves  of  memory  of 
late  years,  and  his  slow  mind  had  some  difficulty  in  recovering 
them.  But  at  last  he  said  with  the  sudden  brightening  of 
recollection  : 

'  Aye — of  coarse  ! — I  knew  theer  wor  soom  one.  Yo  know  'im, 
Davy,  owd  'Lias  o'  Frimley  Moor  ?  He  wor  allus  a  foo'hardy  sort 
o'  creetur.  But  if  he  wor  short  o'  wits  when  he  gan  up,  he  wor 
mich  shorter  when  he  cam  down.  That  wor  a  rum  skit ! — now  I 
think  on  't.  Sich  a  seet  he  wor  !  He  came  by  here  six  o'clock  i' 
th'  mornin.  I  found  him  hangin  ower  t'  yard  gate  theer,  as  white 
an  slamp  as  a  puddin  cloth  oop  on  eend  ;  an  I  browt  him  in,  an 
was  for  gien  him  soom  tay.  An  yor  aunt,  she  gien  him  a  warld 
o'  good  advice  about  his  gooins  on.  But  bless  yo,  he  didn't  tak  in 
a  word  o'  't.  An  for  th'  tay,  he'd  naw  sooner  swallowed  it  than  he 
runs  out,  as  quick  as  leetnin,  an  browt  it  aw  up.  He  wor  fairly 
clemmed  wi'  t'  cold, — 'at  he  wor.  I  put  in  th'  horse,  an  I  took 
him  down  to  t'  Frimley  carrier,  an  we  packed  him  i'  soom  rugs  an 
str  JAV,  an  soa  he  got  home.  But  they  put  him  out  o' t'  school,  an 
he  wor  months  in  his  bed.  An  they  do  tell  me,  as  nobory  can 
mak  owt  o'  'Lias  Dawson  these  mony  years,  i'  th'  matter  o'  brains. 
Eh,  but  yo  shudno  meddle  vri  Satan.' 

'  What  d'yo  think  he  saw  ? '  asked  David,  eagerly,  his  black 
eyes  all  aglow. 

'  He  saw  t'  woman  wi  t'  fish's  tail — 'at's  what  he  saw, '  said 
Louie,  shrilly. 

Reuben  took  no  notice.  He  was  sunk  in  silent  reverie  poking 
at  his  pipe.  In  spite  of  his  confidence  in  the  Almighty's  increased 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  46 

goodwill  towards  the  present  dispensation,  he  was  not  prepared 
to  say  for  certain  what  'Lias  Dawson  did  or  didn't  see. 

'  Nobpry  should  goo  an  meddle  wi  Satan,'  he  repeated  slowly 
after  an  interval ;  and  then  opening  the  yard  gate  he  went  off  on 
his  usual  Sunday  walk  over  the  moors  to  have  a  look  at  his  more 
distant  sheep. 

Davy  stood  intently  looking  after  him  ;  so  did  Louie.  She 
had  clasped  her  hands  behind  her  head,  her  eyes  were  wide,  her 
look  and  attitude  all  eagerness.  She  was  putting  two  and  two 
together — her  uncle's  promise  and  the  mermaid  story  as  the 
Manchester  man  had  delivered  it.  You  had  but  to  see  her  and 
wish,  and,  according  to  the  Manchester  man  and  his  book,  you 
got  your  wish.  The  child's  hatred  of  sermons  and  ministers  had 
not  touched  her  capacity  for  belief  of  this  sort  in  the  least.  She 
believed  feverishly,  and  was  enraged  with  David  for  setting  up  a 
rival  creed,  and  with  her  uncle  for  endorsing  it. 

David  turned  and  walked  towards  the  farmyard.  Louie 
followed  him,  and  tapped  him  peremptorily  on  the  arm.  '  I'm 
gooin  up  theer  Easter  Eve — Saturday  week  ' — and  she  pointed 
over  her  shoulder  to  the  Scout. 

'  Gells  conno  be  out  neets,'  said  David  firmly  ;  '  if  I  goo  I  can 
tell  yo.' 

'  Yo'll  not  goo  without  me — I'd  tell  Aunt  Hannah  ! ' 

'  Yo've  naw  moor  sense  nor  rotten  sticks  ! '  said  David, 
angrily.  '  Yo'll  get  your  death,  an  Aunt  Hannah  '11  be  stick 
stock  mad  wi  boath  on  us.  If  I  goo  she'll  niver  find  out. ' 

Louie  hesitated  a  moment.  To  provoke  Aunt  Hannah  too 
much  might,  indeed,  endanger  the  blue  frock.  But  daring  and 
curiosity  triumphed. 

'  I  doan't  care  ! '  she  said,  tossing  her  head  ;  '  I'm  gooin.' 

David  slammed  the  yard  gate,  and,  hiding  himself  in  a  corner 
of  the  cowhouse,  fell  into  moody  meditations.  It  took  all  the 
tragic  and  mysterious  edge  off  an  adventure  he  had  set  his  heart 
on  that  Louie  should  insist  on  going  too.  But  there  was  no  help 
for  it.  Next  day  they  planned  it  together. 


CHAPTER  V 


'  KEUBEN,  ha  yo  seen  t'  childer  ? '  inquired  Aunt  Hannah,  poking 
her  head  round  the  door,  so  as  to  be  heard  by  her  husband,  who 
was  sitting  outside  cobbling  at  a  bit  of  broken  harness. 

'  Noa  ;  niver  seed  un  since  dinner. ' 

'They  went  down  to  Clough  End,  two  o'clock  about,  for  t' 
bread,  an  I've  yerd  nothin  ov  em  since.  Coom  in  to  your  tay, 
Reuben  !  I'll  keep  nothin  waitin  for  them  !  They  may  goo  empty 
if  they  conno  keep  time  ! ' 

Reuben  went  in.     An  hour  later  the  husband  and  wife  came 


46  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

oufc  together,  and  stood  looking  down  the  steep  road  leading  to 
the  town. 

'  Just  cast  your  eye  on  aw  them  stockins  waitin  to  be  mended,' 
said  Hannah,  angrily,  turning  back  to  the  kitchen,  and  pointing 
to  a  chair  piled  with  various  garments.  '  That's  why  she  doon  it, 
I  spose.  I'll  be  even  wi  her  !  It's  a  poor  soart  of  a  supper  she'll 
get  this  neet,  or  he  noather.  An  her  stomach  aw  she  cares  for  ! ' 

Keuben  wandered  down  into  the  road,  strolled  up  and  down 
for  nearly  an  hour,  while  the  sun  set  and  the  light  waned,  went  as 
far  as  the  corner  by  Wigson's  farm,  asked  a  passer-by,  saw  and 
heard  nothing,  and  came  back,  shaking  his  head  in  answer  to  his 
wife's  shrill  interrogations. 

'Wai,  if  I  doan't  gie  Louie  a  good  smackin,'  ejaculated 
Hannah,  exasperated;  and  she  was  just  going  back  into  the  house 
when  an  exclamation  from  Keuben  stopped  her;  instead,  she  ran 
out  to  him,  holding  on  her  cap  against  the  east  wind. 

'  Look  theer,'  he  said,  pointing;  '  what  iver  is  them  two  up  to  ? ' 

For  suddenly  he  had  noticed  outside  the  gate  leading  into  the 
field  a  basket  lying  on  the  ground  against  the  wall.  The  two 
peered  at  it  with  amazement,  for  it  was  their  own  basket,  and  in 
it  reposed  the  loaves  David  had  been  told  to  bring  back  from 
Clough  End,  while  on  the  top  lay  a  couple  of  cotton  reels  and  a 
card  of  mending  which  Louie  had  been  instructed  to  buy  for  her 
aunt. 

After  a  moment  Keuben  looked  up,  his  face  working. 

'  I'm  thinkin,  Hannah,  they'n  roon  away  ! ' 

It  seemed  to  him  as  he  spoke  that  such  a  possibility  had  been 
always  in  his  mind.  And  during  the  past  week  there  had  been 
much  bad  blood  between  aunt  and  niece.  Twice  had  the  child 
gone  to  bed  supperless,  and  yesterday,  for  some  impertinence, 
Hannah  had  given  her  a  blow,  the  marks  of  which  on  her  cheek 
Heuben  had  watched  guiltily  all  day.  At  night  he  had  dreamed 
of  Sandy.  Since  Mr.  Ancrum  had  set  him  thinking,  and  so  stirred 
his  conscience  in  various  indirect  and  unforeseen  ways,  Sandy  had 
been  a  terror  to  him;  the  dead  man  had  gained  a  mysterious  hold 
on  the  living. 

'  Roon  away  ! '  repeated  Hannah  scornfully  ;  '  whar  ud  they 
roon  to  ?  They're  just  at  soom  o'  their  divilments,  'at's  what  they 
are.  An  if  yo  doan't  tak  a  stick  to  boath  on  them  when  they  coom 
back,  /  will,  soa  theer,  Reuben  Grieve.  Yo  niver  had  no  sperrit 
wi  'em — niver — and  that's  yan  reason  why  they've  grown  up  soa 
ramjam  full  o'  wickedness.' 

It  relieved  her  to  abuse  her  husband.  Reuben  said  nothing, 
but  hung  over  the  wall,  straining  his  eyes  into  the  gathering  dark- 
ness. The  wooded  sides  of  the  great  moor  which  enclosed  the 
Talley  to  the  north  were  fading  into  dimness,  and  to  the  east, 
above  the  ridge  of  Kinder  Low,  a  young  moon  was  rising.  The 
black  steep  wall  of  the  Scout  was  swiftly  taking  to  itself  that 
majesty  which  all  mountains  win  from  the  approach  of  night. 
Involuntarily,  Reuben  held  his  breath,  listening,  hungering  for 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  47 

the  sound  of  children's  voices  on  the  still  air.  Nothing — but  a 
few  intermittent  bird  notes  and  the  eternal  hurry  of  water  from 
the  moorland  to  the  plain. 

There  was  a  step  on  the  road,  and  a  man  passed  whistling. 

'  Jim  Wigson  ! '  shouted  Hannah,  '  is  that  yo,  Jim  ? ' 

The  man  opened  the  yard  gate,  and  came  through  to  them. 
Jim  was  the  eldest  son  of  the  neighbouring  farmer,  whose  girls 
were  Louie's  only  companions.  He  was  a  full-blooded  swaggering 
youth,  with  whom  David  was  generally  on  bad  terms.  David 
despised  him  for  an  oaf  who  could  neither  read  nor  write,  and 
hated  him  for  a  bully. 

He  grinned  when  Hannah  asked  him  questions  about  the 
truants. 

'  Why,  they're  gone  to  Edale,  th'  yoong  rascots,  I'll  uphowd 
yo  !  There's  a  parcel  o'  gipsies  there  tellin  fortunes,  an  lots  o' 
foak  ha  gone  ower  there  to-day.  You  may  mak  your  mind  up 
they've  gone  to  Edale.  That  Louie's  a  limb,  she  is.  She's  got 
spunk  enough  to  waak  to  Lunnon  if  she'd  a  mind.  Oh,  they'll  be 
back  here  soon  enough,  trust  'em.' 

'  I  shut  my  door  at  nine  o'clock,'  said  Hannah,  grimly.  '  Them 
as  cooms  after  that,  may  sleep  as  they  can.' 

'Well,  that'll  be  sharp  wark  for  th'  eyes  if  they're  gone  to 
Edale,'  said  Jim,  with  a  laugh.  'It's  a  good  step  fro  here  to 
Edale.' 

'  Aye,  an  soom  o'  't  bad  ground,'  said  Keuben  uneasily — '  varra 
bad  ground.' 

'  Aye,  it's  not  good  walkin,  neets.  If  they  conno  see  their 
way  when  they  get  top  o' t'  Downfall,  they'll  stay  theer  till  it  gets 
mornin,  if  they've  ony  sort  o'  gumption.  But,  bless  yo,  it  bean't 
gooin  to  be  a  dark  neet,' — and  he  pointed  to  the  moon.  '  They'll 
be  here  afore  yo  goo  to  bed.  An  if  yo  want  onybody  to  help  yo 
gie  Davy  a  bastin,  just  coe  me,  Mr.  Grieve.  Good  neet  to  yo.' 

Reuben  fidgeted  restlessly  all  the  evening.  Towards  nine  he 
went  out  on  the  pretext  of  seeing  to  a  cow  that  had  lately  calved 
and  was  in  a  weakly  state.  He  gave  the  animal  her  food  and 
clean  litter,  doing  everything  more  clumsily  than  usual.  Then 
he  went  into  the  stable  and  groped  about  for  a  lantern  that  stood 
in  the  corner. 

He  found  it,  slipped  through  the  farmyard  into  the  lane,  and 
then  lit  it  out  of  sight  of  the  house. 

'  It's  bad  ground  top  o' t'  Downfall,'  he  said  to  himself,  apolo- 
getically, as  he  guiltily  opened  the  gate  on  to  the  moor — '  varra 
bad  ground.' 

Hannah  shut  her  door  that  night  neither  at  nine  nor  at  ten. 
For  by  the  latter  hour  the  master  of  the  house  was  still  absent, 
and  nowhere  to  be  found,  in  spite  of  repeated  calls  from  the  door 
and  up  the  lane.  Hannah  guessed  where  he  had  gone  without 
much  difficulty  ;  but  her  guess  only  raised  her  wrath  to  a  white 
heat.  Troublesome  brats  Sandy's  children  had  always  been — 
Louie  more  especially — but  they  had  never  perpetrated  any  such 


48  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

overt  act  of  rebellion  as  this  before,  and  the  dour,  tyrannical 
woman  was  filled  with  a  kind  of  silent  frenzy  as  she  thought  of 
her  husband  going  out  to  welcome  the  wanderers. 

'  It's  a  quare  kind  o'  fatted  calf  they'll  get  when  /  lay  hands 
on  'em,'  she  thought  to  herself  as  she  stood  at  the  front  door,  in 
the  cold  darkness,  listening. 

Meanwhile  David  and  Louie,  high  up  on  the  side  of  Kinder 
Scout,  were  speculating  with  a  fearful  joy  as  to  what  might  be 
happening  at  the  farm.  The  manner  of  their  escape  had  cost  them 
much  thought.  Should  they  slip  out  of  the  front  door  instead  of 
going  to  bed  ?  But  the  woodwork  of  the  farm  was  old  and  creak- 
ing, and  the  bolts  and  bars  heavy.  They  were  generally  secured 
before  supper  by  Hannah  herself,  and,  though  they  might  be 
surreptitiously  oiled,  the  children  despaired — considering  how 
close  the  kitchen  was  to  the  front  door — of  getting  out  without 
rousing  Hannah's  sharp  ears.  Other  projects,  in  which  windows 
and  ropes  played  a  part,  were  discussed.  David  held  strongly 
that  he  alone  could  have  managed  any  one  of  them,  but  he 
declined  flatly  to  attempt  them  with  a  '  gell. '  In  the  same  way  he 
alone  could  have  made  his  way  up  the  Scout  and  over  the  river 
in  the  dark.  But  who'd  try  it  with  a  '  gell '  ? 

The  boy's  natural  conviction  of  the  uselessness  of  '  gells  '  was 
never  more  disagreeably  expressed  than  on  this  occasion.  But  he 
could  not  shake  Louie  off.  She  pinched  him  when  he  enraged 
her  beyond  bounds,  but  she  never  wavered  in  her  determination 
to  go  too. 

Finally  they  decided  to  brave  Aunt  Hannah  and  take  the  con- 
sequences. They  meant  to  be  out  all  night  in  hiding,  and  in  the 
morning  they  would  come  back  and  take  their  beatings.  David 
comfortably  reflected  that  Uncle  Reuben  couldn't  do  him  much 
harm,  and,'  though  Louie  could  hardly  flatter  herself  so  far,  her 
tone,  also,  in  the  matter  was  philosophical. 

'  Theer's  soom  bits  o'  owd  books  i'  th'  top-attic,'  she  said  to 
David  ;  '  I'll  leave  'em  in  t'  stable,  an  when  we  coom  home,  I'll 
tie  'em  on  iny  back — under  my  dress — an  she  may  leather  away 
till  Christmas.' 

So  on  their  return  from  Clough  End  with  the  bread — about 
five  o'clock — they  slipped  into  the  field,  crouching  under  the  wall, 
so  as  to  escape  Hannah's  observation,  deposited  their  basket  by 
the  gate,  took  up  a  bundle  and  tin  box  which  David  had  hidden 
that  morning  under  the  hedge,  and,  creeping  back  again  into  the 
road,  passed  noiselessly  through  the  gate  on  to  the  moor,  just  as 
Aunt  Hannah  was  lifting  the  kettle  off  the  fire  for  tea. 

Then  came  a  wild  and  leaping  flight  over  the  hill,  down  to  the 
main  Kinder  stream,  across  it,  and  up  the  face  of  the  Scout — up, 
and  up,  with  smothered  laughter,  and  tumbles  and  scratches  at 
every  step,  and  a  glee  of  revolt  and  adventure  swelling  every  vein. 

It  was  then  a  somewhat  stormy  afternoon,  with  alternate 
gusts  of  wind  and  gleams  of  sun  playing  on  the  black  boulders, 
the  red -brown  slopes  of  the  mountain.  The  air  was  really  cold 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  49 

and  cutting,  promising  a  frosty  night.  But  the  children  took  no 
notice  of  it.  Up,  and  on,  through  the  elastic  carpet  of  heather 
and  bilberry,  and  across  bogs  which  showed  like  veins  of  vivid 
green  on  the  dark  surface  of  the  moor ;  under  circling  peewits, 
who  fled  before  them,  crying  with  plaintive  shrillness  to  each 
other,  as  though  in  protest ;  and  past  grouse-nests,  whence  the 
startled  mothers  soared  precipitately  with  angry  duckings,  each 
leaving  behind  her  a  loose  gathering  of  eggs  lying  wide  and  open 
on  the  heather,  those  newly  laid  gleaming  a  brighter  red  beside 
their  fellows.  The  tin  box  and  its  contents  rattled  under  David's 
arm  as  he  leapt  and  straddled  across  the  bogs,  choosing  always 
the  widest  jump  and  the  stiffest  bit  of  climb,  out  of  sheer  wanton- 
ness of  life  and  energy.  Louie's  thin  figure,  in  its  skimp  cotton 
dress  and  red  crossover,  her  long  legs  in  their  blue  worsted 
stockings,  seemed  to  fly  over  the  moor,  winged,  as  it  were,  by  an 
ecstasy  of  freedom.  If  one  could  but  be  in  two  places  at  once — 
on  the  Scout — and  peeping  from  some  safe  corner  at  Aunt  Han- 
nah's wrath ! 

Presently  they  came  to  the  shoulder  whereon — gleaming  under 
the  level  light — lay  the  Mermaid's  Pool.  David  had  sufficiently 
verified  the  fact  that  the  tarn  did  indeed  bear  this  name  in  the 
modern  guide-book  parlance  of  the  district.  Young  men  and 
women,  out  on  a  holiday  from  the  big  towns  near,  and  carrying 
little  red  or  green  'guides,'  spoke  of  the  'Mermaid's  Pool'  with 
the  accent  of  romantic  interest.  But  the  boy  had  also  discovered 
that  no  native-born  farmer  or  shepherd  about  had  ever  heard  of  the 
name,  or  would  have  a  word  to  say  to  it.  And  for  the  first  time 
he  had  stumbled  full  into  the  deep  deposit  of  witch-lore  and  belief 
still  surviving  in  the  Kinder  Scout  district,  as  in  all  the  remoter 
moorland  of  the  North.  Especially  had  he  won  the  confidence  of 
a  certain  '  owd  Matt,'  a  shepherd  from  a  farm  high  on  Mardale 
Moor  ;  and  the  tales  '  owd  Matt '  had  told  him — of  mysterious 
hares  coursed  at  night  by  angry  farmers  enraged  by  the  '  bedivil- 
ment '  of  their  stock,  shot  at  with  silver  slugs,  and  identified  next 
morning  with  some  dreaded  hag  or  other  lying  groaning  and 
wounded  in  her  bed — of  calves'  hearts  burnt  at  midnight  with 
awful  ceremonies,  while  the  baffled  witch  outside  flung  herself  in 
rnge  and  agony  against  the  close-barred  doors  and  windows — of 
spells  and  wise  men — these  things  had  sent  chills  of  pleasing 
horror  through  the  boy's  frame.  They  were  altogether  new  to 
him,  in  this  vivid  personal  guise  at  least,  and  mixed  up  with  all 
the  familiar  names  and  places  of  the  district ;  for  his  childish  life 
had  been  singularly  solitary,  giving  to  books  the  part  which  half 
a  century  ago  would  have  been  taken  by  tradition  ;  and,  more- 
over, the  witch-belief  in  general  had  now  little  foothold  among 
the  younger  generation  of  the  Scout,  and  was  only  spoken  of  with 
reserve  and  discretion  among  the  older  men. 

But  the  stories  once  heard  had  struck  deep  into  the  lad's  quick 
and  pondering  mind.  Jenny  Crum  seemed  to  have  been  the 
latest  of  all  the  great  witches  of  Kinder  Scout.  The  memory  of 


50  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

her  as  a  real  and  awful  personage  was  still  fresh  in  the  mind  of 
many  a  grey-haired  farmer ;  the  history  of  her  death  was  well 
known ;  and  most  of  the  local  inhabitants,  even  the  boys  and 
girls,  turned  out,  when  you  came  to  inquire,  to  be  familiar  with 
the  later  legends  of  the  Pool,  and,  as  David  presently  discovered, 
with  one  or  more  tales — for  the  stories  were  discrepant — of  'Lias 
Dawson's  meeting  with  the  witch,  now  fifteen  years  ago. 

'  What  had  'Lias  seen  ?  "What  would  they  see  ? '  His  flesh 
crept  deliciously. 

'  Wai,  owd  Mermaid  ! '  shouted  Louie,  defiantly,  as  soon  as  she 
had  got  her  breath  again.  '  Are  yo  coomin  out  to-night  ?  Yo  '11 
ha  coompany  if  yo  do. ' 

David  smiled  contemptuously  and  did  not  condescend  to  argue. 

'  Are  yo  coomin  on  ? '  he  said,  shouldering  his  box  and  bundle 
again.  '  They'st  be  up  after  us  if  we  doan't  look  out.' 

And  on  they  went,  climbing  a  steep  boulder-strewn  slope  above 
the  pool  till  they  came  to  the  '  edge '  itself,  a  tossed  and  broken 
battlement  of  stone,  running  along  the  top  of  the  Scout.  Here 
the  great  black  slabs  of  grit  were  lying  fantastically  piled  upon 
each  other  at  every  angle  and  in  every  possible  combination. 
The  path  which  leads  from  the  Hayfield  side  across  the  desolate 
tableland  of  the  Scout  to  the  Snake  Inn  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
ridge,  ran  among  them,  and  many  a  wayfarer,  benighted  or  mist- 
bound  on  the  moor,  had  taken  refuge  before  now  in  their  caverns 
and  recesses,  waiting  for  the  light,  and  dreading  to  find  himself 
on  the  cliffs  of  the  Downfall. 

But  David  pushed  on  past  many  hiding-places  well  known  to 
him,  till  the  two  reached  the  point  where  the  mountain  face 
sweeps  backward  in  the  curve  of  which  the  Downfall  makes  the 
centre.  At  the  outward  edge  of  the  curve  a  great  buttress  of 
ragged  and  jutting  rocks  descends  perpendicularly  towards  the 
valley,  like  a  ruined  staircase  with  displaced  and  gigantic  steps. 

Down  this  David  began  to  make  his  way,  and  Louie  jumped, 
and  slid,  and  swung  after  him,  as  lithe  and  sure-footed  as  a  cat. 
Presently  David  stopped.  '  This  ull  do, '  he  said,  surveying  the 
place  with  a  critical  eye. 

They  had  just  slid  down  a  sloping  chimney  of  rock,  and  were 
now  standing  on  a  flat  block,  over  which  hung  another  like  a 
penthouse  roof.  On  the  side  of  the  Downfall  there  was  a  project- 
ing stone,  on  which  David  stepped  out  to  look  about  him. 

Holding  on  to  a  rock  above  for  precaution's  sake,  he  recon- 
noitred their  position.  To  his  left  was  the  black  and  semicircular 
cliff,  down  the  centre  of  which  the  Downfall  stream,  now  tamed 
and  thinned  by  the  dry  spring  winds,  was  trickling.  The  course 
of  the  stream  was  marked  by  a  vivid  orange  colour,  produced, 
apparently,  in  the  grit  by  the  action  of  water  ;  and  about  halfway 
down  the  fall  a  mass  of  rock  had  recently  slipped,  leaving  a  bright 
scar,  through  which  one  saw,  as  it  were,  the  inner  mass  of  the 
Peak,  the  rectangular  blocks,  now  thick,  now  thin,  as  of  some 
Cyclopean  masonry,  wherewith  the  earth-forces  had  built  it  up  in 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  51 

days  before  a  single  alp  had  yet  risen  on  the  face  of  Europe. 
Below  the  boy's  feet  a  precipice,  which  his  projecting  stone  over- 
hung, fell  to  the  bed  of  the  stream.  On  this  side  at  least  they 
were  abundantly  protected. 

On  the  moorside  the  steep  broken  ground  of  the  hill  came  up 
to  the  rocky  line  they  had  been  descending,  and  offered  no  diffi- 
culty to  any  sure-footed  person.  But  no  path  ran  anywhere  near 
them,  and  from  the  path  up  above  they  were  screened  by  the  grit 
'  edge '  already  spoken  of.  Moreover,  their  penthouse,  or  half- 
gable,  had  towards  the  Downfall  a  tolerably  wide  opening ;  but 
towards  the  moor  and  the  north  there  was  but  a  narrow  hole, 
which  David  soon  saw  could  be  stopped  by  a  stone.  When  he 
crept  back  into  their  hiding-place,  it  pleased  him  extremely. 

'  They'll  niver  find  us,  if  they  look  till  next  week ! '  he 
exclaimed  exultantly,  and,  slipping  off  the  heavy  bundle  strapped 
on  his  back,  he  undid  its  contents.  Two  old  woollen  rugs 
appeared — one  a  blanket,  the  other  a  horse-rug — and  wrapped 
up  in  the  middle  of  them  a  jagged  piece  of  tarpaulin,  a  hammer, 
some  wooden  pegs,  and  two  or  three  pieces  of  tallow  dip.  Louie, 
sitting  cross-legged  in  the  other  corner,  with  her  chin  in  her 
hands,  looked  on  with  her  usual  detached  and  critical  air.  David 
had  not  allowed  her  much  of  a  voice  in  the  preparations,  and  she 
felt  an  instinctive  aversion  towards  other  people's  ingenuities. 
All  she  had  contributed  was  something  to  while  away  the  time, 
in  the  shape  of  a  bag  of  bull's-eyes,  bought  with  some  of  the  six- 
pence Uncle  Reuben  had  given  her. 

Having  laid  out  his  stores,  David  went  to  work.  Getting  out 
on  the  projecting  stone  again,  he  laid  the  bit  of  tarpaulin  along 
the  sloping  edge  of  the  rock  which  roofed  them,  pegged  it  down 
into  crevices  at  either  end,  and  laid  a  stone  to  hold  it  in  the 
middle.  Then  he  slipped  back  again,  and,  behold,  there  was  a 
curtain  between  them  and  the  Downfall,  which,  as  the  dusk  was 
fast  advancing,  made  the  little  den  inside  almost  completely  dark. 

'  What's  t'  good  o'  that  ? '  inquired  Louie,  scornfully,  more 
than  half  inclined  to  put  out  a  mischievous  hand  and  pull  it 
down  again. 

'Doan't  worrit,  an  yo'll  see,'  returned  David,  and  Louie's 
curiosity  got  the  better  of  her  malice. 

Stooping  down  beside  her,  he  looked  through  the  hole  which 
opened  to  the  moor.  His  eye  travelled  down  the  hillside  to  the 
path  far  below,  just  visible  in  the  twilight  to  a  practised  eye,  to 
the  river,  to  the  pasture-fields  on  the  hill  beyond,  and  to  the 
smoke,  rising  above  the  tops  of  some  unseen  trees,  which  marked 
the  site  of  the  farmhouse.  No  one  in  sight.  The  boy  crawled 
out,  and  searched  the  .moor  till  he  found  a  large  flattish  stone, 
which  he  brought  and  placed  against  the  opening,  ready  to  be 
drawn  quite  across  it  from  inside. 

Then  he  slipped  back  again,  and  in  the  glimmer  of  light 
which  remained  groped  for  his  tin  box.  Louie  stooped  over  and 
eagerly  watched  him  open  it.  Out  came  a  bottle  of  milk,  some 


52  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

large  slices  of  bread,  some  oatcake,  and  some  cheese.  In  the 
corner,  recklessly  near  the  cheese,  lurked  a  grease-bespattered 
lantern  and  a  box  of  matches.  David  had  borrowed  the  lantern 
that  afternoon  from  a  Clough  End  friend  under  the  most  solemn 
vows  of  secrecy,  and  he  drew  it  out  now  with  a  deliberate  and 
special  relish.  When  he  had  driven  a  peg  into  a  cranny  of  the 
rock,  trimmed  half  a  dip  carefully,  lighted  it,  put  it  into  the 
lantern,  and  hung  the  lantern  on  the  peg,  he  fell  back  on  his 
heels  to  study  the  effect,  with  a  beaming  countenance,  filled  all 
through  with  the  essentially  human  joy  of  contrivance. 

'  Now,  then,  d'yo  see  what  that  tarpaulin  's  for  ? '  he  inquired 
triumphantly  of  Louie. 

•  But  Louie's  mouth  was  conveniently  occupied  with  a  bull's- 
eye,  and  she  only  sucked  it  the  more  vigorously  in  answer. 

'  Why,  yo  little  silly,  if  it  worn't  for  that  we  couldno  ha  no 
leet.  They'd  see  us  from  t'  fields  even,  as  soon  as  it 's  real  dark.' 

'Doan't  bleeve  it,'  said  Louie,  laconically,  in  a  voice  much 
muffled  by  bull's-eyes. 

'  Wai,  yo  needn't ;  I'm  gooin  to  have  my  tea.' 

And  David,  diving  into  the  tin,  brought  out  a  hunch  of  bread 
and  a  knob  of  cheese.  The  voracity  with  which  he  fell  on  them, 
soon,  with  him  also,  stopped  up  the  channels  of  speech.  Louie, 
alarmed  perhaps  by  the  rapidity  with  which  the  mouthfuls  disap- 
peared, slid  up  on  her  heels  and  claimed  her  share.  Never  was 
there  a  more  savoury  meal  than  that !  Their  little  den  with  its 
curtain  felt  warm  for  the  moment  after  the  keen  air  of  the  moor  ; 
the  lantern  light  seemed  to  shut  them  in  from  the  world,  gave 
them  the  sense  of  settlers  carving  a  home  out  of  the  desert,  and 
milk  which  had  been  filched  from  Aunt  Hannah  lay  like  nectar  in 
the  mouth. 

After  their  meal  both  children  crept  out  on  to  the  moor  to  see 
what  might  be  going  on  in  the  world  outside.  Darkness  was 
fast  advancing.  A  rising  wind  swept  through  the  dead  bracken, 
whirled  round  the  great  grit  boulders,  and  sent  a  shiver  through 
Louie's  thin  body. 

'  It's  cowd,'  she  said  pettishly  ;  '  I'm  gooin  back.' 

'  Did  yo  spose  it  wor  gooin  to  be  warm,  yo  little  silly  ?  That's 
why  I  browt  t'  rugs,  of  course.  Gells  never  think  o'  nothin.  It's 
parishin  cowd  here,  neets — fit  to  tie  yo  up  in  knots  wi  th'  rheu- 
matics, like  Jim  Spedding,  if  yo  doan't  mind  yorsel.  It  wor  only 
laying  out  a  neet  on  Frimley  Moor — poachin,  I  guess — 'at  twisted 
Jim  that  way.' 

Louie's  countenance  fell.  Jim  Spedding  was  a  little  crooked 
greengrocer  in  Clough  End,  of  whom  she  had  a  horror.  The 
biting  hostile  wind,  which  obliged  her  to  hold  her  hat  on  against 
it  with  both  hands,  the  black  moor  at  their  feet,  the  grey  sweep 
of  sky,  the  pale  cloudy  moon,  the  darkness  which  was  fast  enve- 
loping them— blotting  out  the  distant  waves  of  hill,  and  fusing 
the  great  blocks  of  grit  above  them  into  one  threatening  mass — 
all  these  became  suddenly  hateful  to  her.  She  went  back  into 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  63 

their  den,  wrapped  herself  up  in  one  of  the  tattered  rugs,  and 
crept  sulkily  into  a  corner.  The  lantern  gleamed  on  the  child's 
huddled  form,  the  frowning  brow,  the  great  vixenish  eyes.  She 
had  half  a  mind  to  run  home,  in  spite  of  Aunt  Hannah.  Hours 
to  wait !  and  she  loathed  waiting. 

But  gradually,  as  the  rug  warmed  her,  the  passion  for  adven- 
ture and  mystery — the  vision  of  the  mermaid — the  hope  of  the 
blue  cotton — reasserted  themselves,  and  the  little  sharp  face 
relaxed.  She  began  to  amuse  herself  with  hunting  the  spiders 
and  beetles  which  ran  across  the  rocky  roof  above  her  head,  or 
crept  in  and  out  of  the  crevices  of  stone,  wondering,  no  doubt,  at 
this  unbidden  and  tormenting  daylight.  She  caught  one  or  two 
small  blackbeetles  in  a  dirty  rag  of  a  handkerchief — for  she 
would  not  touch  them  if  she  could  help  it — and  then  it  delighted 
her  to  push  aside  the  curtain,  stretch  her  hand  out  into  the  void 
darkness,  and  let  them  fall  into  the  gulf  below.  Even  if  they 
could  fly,  she  reflected,  it  must  '  gie  'em  a  good  start.' 

Meanwhile,  David  had  charged  up  the  hill,  filled  with  a 
sudden  curiosity  to  see  what  the  top  of  the  Scout  might  look  like 
by  night.  He  made  his  way  through  the  battlement  of  grit, 
found  the  little  path  behind,  gleaming  white  in  the  moonlight, 
because  of  the  quartz  sheddings  which  wind  and  weather  are  for 
ever  teasing  out  of  the  grit,  and  which  drift  into  the  open  spaces; 
and  at  last,  guided  by  the  sound  and  the  gleam  of  water,  he 
made  out  the  top  of  the  Downfall,  climbed  a  high  peat  bank,  and 
the  illimitable  plateau  of  the  Scout  lay  wide  and  vast  before  him. 

Here,  on  the  mountain-top,  there  seemed. to  be  more  daylight 
left  than  on  its  rocky  sides,  and  the  moon  among  the  parting 
clouds  shone  intermittently  over  the  primeval  waste.  The  top  of 
the  Peak  is,  so  to  speak,  a  vast  black  glacier,  whereof  the  crevasses 
are  great  fissures,  ebon-  black  in  colour,  sometimes  ten  feet  deep, 
and  with  ten  feet  more  of  black  water  at  the  bottom.  For  miles 
on  either  side  the  ground  is  seamed  and  torn  with  these  crevasses, 
now  shallower,  now  deeper,  succeeding  each  other  at  intervals  of 
a  yard  or  two,  and  it  is  they  which  make  the  crossing  of  the  Peak 
in  the  dark  or  in  mist  a  matter  of  danger  sometimes  even  for  the 
native.  David,  high  on  his  bank,  from  which  the  black  over- 
hanging eaves  curled  inwards  beneath  his  feet  to  a  sullen  depth 
of  water,  could  see  against  the  moonlit  sky  the  posts  which 
marked  the  track  from  the  Downfall  to  the  Snake  Inn  on  the 
Glossop  Road.  Miss  that  track — a  matter  of  some  fifteen  minutes' 
walk  for  the  sturdy  farmer  who  knows  it  well — and  you  find 
yourself  lost  in  a  region  which  has  no  features  and  no  landmarks, 
where  the  earth  lays  snares  for  you  and  the  mists  betray  you, 
and  where  even  in  bright  sunshine  there  reigns  an  eternal  and 
indescribable  melancholy.  The  strangeness  and  wildness  of  the 
scene  entered  the  boy's  consciousness,  and  brought  with  them  a 
kind  of  exaltation.  He  stood  gazing ;  that  inner  life  of  his,  of 
which  Louie,  his  constant  companion,  knew  as  good  as  nothing, 
asserting  itself. 


64  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

For  the  real  companions  of  his  heart  were  not  Louie  or  the 
boys  with  whom  he  had  joked  and  sparred  at  school ;  they  were 
ideas,  images,  sounds,  imaginations,  caught  from  books  or  from 
the  talk  of  old  'Lias  and  Mr.  Ancrum.  He  had  but  to  stand  still 
a  moment,  as  it  were,  to  listen,  and  the  voices  and  sights  of 
another  world  came  out  before  him  like  players  on  to  a  stage. 
Spaces  of  shining  water,  crossed  by  ships  with  decks  manned  by 
heroes  for  whom  the  blue  distance  was  for  ever  revealing  new 
lands  to  conquer,  new  adventures  to  affront ;  the  plumed  Indian 
in  his  forest  divining  the  track  of  his  enemy  from  a  displaced  leaf 
or  twig  ;  the  Zealots  of  Jehovah  urging  a  last  frenzied  defence  of 
Jehovah's  Sanctuary  against  the  Roman  host ;  and  now,  last  of 
all,  the  gloom  and  flames,  the  infernal  palaces,  the  towering 
fiends,  the  grandiose  and  lumbering  war  of  '  Paradise  Lost '  : 
these  things,  together  with  the  names  and  suggestions  of  'Lias's 
talk — that  whole  crew  of  shining,  fighting,  haranguing  men  and 
women  whom  the  old  dreamer  was  for  ever  bringing  into  weird 
action  on  the  moorside — lived  in  the  boy's  mind,  and  in  any  pause 
of  silence,  as  we  have  said,  emerged  and  took  possession. 

It  was  only  that  morning,  in  an  old  meal-chest  which  had 
belonged  to  his  grandfather,  James  Grieve,  he  had  discovered  the 
old  calf-bound  copy  of  '  Paradise  Lost,'  which  was  now  in  one  of 
his  pockets,  balanced  by  '  Anson's  Voyages '  in  the  other.  All  the 
morning  he  had  been  lying  hidden  in  a  corner  of  the  sheepfold 
devouring  it,  the  rolling  verse  imprinting  itself  on  the  boy's 
plastic  memory  by  a  sort  of  enchantment — 

Yon  dreary  plain,  forlorn  and  wild, 
The  seat  of  desolation,  void  of  light, 
Save  what  the  glimmering  of  these  livid  flames 
Casts  pale  and  dreadful. 

He  chanted  the  words  aloud,  flinging  them  out  in  an  ecstasy  of 
pleasure.  Before  him,  as  it  seemed,  there  stretched  that  very 
plain  'forlorn  and  wild,'  with  its  black  fissures  and  its  impene- 
trable horizons  ;  the  fitful  moonlight  stood  "for  the  glimmering  of 
the  Tartarean  flames  ;  the  remembered  words  and  the  actual 
sights  played  into  and  fused  with  each  other,  till  in  the  cold  and 
darkness  the  boy  thrilled  all  through  with  that  mingling  of  joy 
and  terror  which  is  only  possible  to  the  creature  of  fine  gifts  and 
high  imagination. 

Jenny  Crum,  too  !  A  few  more  hours  and  he  might  see  her 
face  to  face — as  'Lias  had  seen  her.  He  quaked  a  little  at  the 
thought,  but  he  would  not  have  flinched  for  the  world.  He  was 
not  going  to  lose  his  wits,  as  'Lias  did  ;  and  as  for  Louie,  if  she 
were  frightened  it  would  do  her  good  to  be  afraid  of  something. 

Hark  !    He  turned,  stooped,  put  his  hand  to  his  ear. 

The  sound  he  heard  had  startled  him,  turned  him  pale.  But 
he  soon  recovered  himself.  It  was  the  sound  of  heavy  boots  on 
stones,  and  it  was  brought  to  him  by  the  wind,  as  it  seemed,  from 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  55 

far  below.  Some  one  was  coming  after  them — perhaps  more  than 
one.  He  thought  he  heard  a  voice. 

He  leapt  fissure  after  fissure  like  a  young  roe,  fled  to  the  top 
of  the  Downfall  and  looked  over.  Did  the  light  show  through  the 
tarpaulin  ?  Alack  ! — there  must  be  a  rent  somewhere — for  he  saw 
a  dim  glow-worm  light  beyond  the  cliff,  on  the  dark  rib  of  the 
mountain.  It  was  invisible  from  below,  but  any  roving  eye  from 
the  top  would  be  caught  by  it  in  an  instant.  In  a  second  he  had 
raced  along  the  edge,  dived  in  and  out  of  the  blocks,  guiding  his 
way  by  a  sort  of  bat's  instinct,  till  he  reached  the  rocky  stairway, 
which  he  descended  at  imminent  risk  of  his  neck. 

'  Put  your  hand  ower  t'  leet,  Louie,  till  I  move  t'  stone  ! ' 

The  light  disappeared,  David  crept  in,  and  the  two  children 
crouched  together  in  a  glow  of  excitement. 

'  Is  't  Uncle  Keuben  ? '  whispered  Louie,  pressing  her  face 
against  the  side  of  the  rocks,  and  trying  to  look  through  the 
chink  between  it  and  the  covering  stone. 

'  Aye — wi  a  lantern.  But  there's  talkin — theer's  someone  else. 
Jim  Wigson,  mebbe.' 

'If  it's  Jim  Wigson,'  said  Louie,  between  her  small,  shut 
teeth,  '  I'll  bite  him  ! ' 

'  Cos  yo're  a  gell !  Gells  and  cats  bite — they  can't  do  nowt 
else ! ' 

Whereupon  Louie  pinched  him,  and  David,  giving  an  invo- 
luntary kick  as  he  felt  the  nip,  went  into  first  a  fit  of  smothered 
laughter,  and  then  seized  her  arm  in  a  tight  grip. 

'  Keep  quiet,  conno  yo  ?  Now  they're  coomin,  an  I  bleeve 
they're  coomin  this  way  ! ' 

But,  after  another  minute's  waiting,  he  was  quite  unable  to 
obey  his  own  injunction,  and  he  crept  out  on  the  stone  overlooking 
the  precipice  to  look. 

'  Coom  back  !  They'll  see  yo  ! '  cried  Louie,  in  a  shrill  whisper; 
and  she  caught  him  by  the  ankle. 

David  gave  a  kick.  '  Let  goo;  if  yo  do  'at  I  shall  fall  an  be 
kilt!' 

She  held  her  breath.  Presently,  with  an  exclamation,  he 
knelt  down  and  looked  over  the  edge  of  the  great  sloping  block 
which  served  them  for  roof. 

'  Wai,  I  niver  !  Theer's  nobory  but  Uncle  Keuben,  an  he's 
talkin  to  hissel.  Wai,  this  is  a  rum  skit  ! ' 

And  he  stayed  outside  watching,  in  spite  of  Louie's  angry 
commands  to  him  to  come  back  into  the  den.  David  had  no 
fears  of  being  discovered  by  Uncle  Reuben.  If  it  had  been  Jim 
Wigson  it  would  have  been  different. 

Presently,  on  the  path  some  sixty  feet  above  them,  but  hidden 
from  them  by  the  mass  of  tumbled  rocks  through  which  they  had 
descended,  they  heard  some  one  puffing  and  blowing,  a  stick 
striking  and  slipping  on  the  stones,  and  weird  rays  of  light  stole 
down  the  mountain-side,  and  in  and  out  of  the  vast  blocks  with 
which  it  was  overstrewn. 


56  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

'  He's  stopt  up  theer,'  said  David,  creeping  in  under  the  gable, 
'an  I  mun  hear  what  he's  sayin.  I'm  gooin  up  nearer.  If  yo 
coom  we'll  be  caught.' 

'  Yo  stoopid  ! '  cried  Louie.  But  he  had  crawled  up  the  narrow 
chimney  they  had  come  down  by  in  a  moment,  and  she  was  left 
alone.  Her  spirit  failed  her  a  little.  She  daren't  climb  after  him 
in  the  dark. 

David  clambered  in  and  out,  the  fierce  wind  that  beat  the 
side  of  the  mountain  masking  whatever  sounds  he  may  have 
made,  till  he  found  himself  directly  under  the  place  where  Reuben 
Grieve  sat,  slowly  recovering  his  breath. 

'  0  Lord  !  O  Lord !  They're  aw  reet,  Sandy — they're  aw 
reet!' 

The  boy  crouched  down  sharply  under  an  overhanging  stone, 
arrested  by  the  name — Sandy — his  father's  name. 

Once  or  twice  since  he  came  to  Kinder  he  had  heard  it  on 
Uncle  Reuben's  lips,  once  or  twice  from  neighbours  who  had 
known  James  Grieve's  sons  in  their  youth.  But  Sandy  had  left 
the  farm  early  and  was  little  remembered,  and  the  true  story  of 
Sandy's  life  was  unknown  in  the  valley,  though  there  were  many 
rumours.  What  the  close  and  timid  Reuben  heard  from  Mr. 
Gurney,  the  head  of  Sandy's  firm,  after  Sandy's  death,  he  told  to 
no  one  but  Hannah.  The  children  knew  generally,  from  what 
Hannah  often  let  fall  when  she  was  in  a  temper,  that  their  mother 
was  a  disgrace  to  them,  but  they  knew  no  more,  and,  with  the 
natural  instinct  of  forlorn  creatures  on  the  defensive,  studiously 
avoided  the  subject  within  the  walls  of  Needham  Farm.  They 
might  question  old  'Lias  ;  they  would  suffer  many  things  rather 
than  question  their  uncle  and  aunt. 

But  David  especially  had  had  many  secret  thoughts  he  could 
not  put  away,  of  late,  about  his  parents.  And  to  hear  his  father's 
name  dropped  like  this  into  the  night  moved  the  lad  strangely. 
He  lay  close,  listening  with  all  his  ears,  expecting  passionately,  he 
knew  not  what. 

But  nothing  came — or  the  wind  carried  it  away.  When  he 
was  rested,  Reuben  got  up  and  began  to  move  about  with  the 
lantern,  apparently  throwing  its  light  from  side  to  side. 

'  David  !  Louie  ! ' 

The  hoarse,  weak  voice,  strained  to  its  utmost  pitch,  died 
away  on  the  night  wind,  and  a  weird  echo  came  back  from  the 
cliffs  of  the  Downfall. 

There  was  no  menace  in  the  cry — rather  a  piteous  entreaty. 
The  truant  below  had  a  strange  momentary  impulse  to  answer — 
to  disclose  himself.  But  it  was  soon  past,  and  instead,  he  crept 
well  out  of  reach  of  the  rays  which  flashed  over  the  precipitous 
ground  about  him.  As  he  did  so  he  noticed  the  Mermaid's  Pool, 
gleaming  in  a  pale  ray  of  moonlight,  some  two  hundred  feet  below. 
A  sudden  alarm  seized  him,  lest  Reuben  should  be  caught  by  it, 
put  two  and  two  together  and  understand. 

But  Reuben  was  absorbed  in  a  discomfort,  half  moral,  half 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  57 

superstitious,  and  nothing  else  reached  the  slow  brain — which  was 
besides  preoccupied  by  Jim  Wigson's  suggestion.  After  a  bit  he 
picked  up  his  stick  and  went  on  again.  David,  eagerly  watching, 
tracked  him  along  the  path  which  follows  the  ridge,  and  saw  the 
light  pause  once  more  close  to  the  Downfall. 

So  far  as  the  boy  could  see,  his  uncle  made  a  long  stay  at  i . 
point  beyond  the  stream,  the  bed  of  which  was  just  discernible, 
as  a  sort  of  paler  streak  on  the  darkness. 

'Why,  that's  about  whar  th'  Edale  path  cooms  in,'  thought 
David,  Avondering.  '  What  ud  he  think  we'd  be  doin  theer  ? ' 

Faint  sounds  came  to  him  in  a  lull  of  the  wind,  as  though 
Reuben  were  shouting  again — shouting  many  times.  Then  the 
light  went  wavering  on,  denning  in  its  course  the  curved  ridge  of 
the  further  moor,  till  at  last  it  made  a  long  circuit  downwards, 
disappearing  for  a  minute  somewhere  in  the  dark  bosom  of  Kinder 
Low,  about  midway  between  earth  and  sky.  David  guessed  that 
Uncle  Eeuben  must  be  searching  the  smithy.  Then  it  descended 
rapidly,  till  finally  it  vanished  behind  the  hill  far  below,  which 
was  just  distinguishable  in  the  cloudy  moonshine.  Uncle  Keuben 
had  gone  home. 

David  drew  a  long  breath.  But  that  patient  quest  in  the 
dark — the  tone  of  the  farmer's  call— that  mysterious  word  Sandy, 
had  touched  the  boy,  made  him  restless.  His  mood  grew  a  little 
flat,  even  a  little  remorseful.  The  joy  of  their  great  adventure 
ebbed  a  little. 

However,  he  climbed  down  again  to  Louie,  and  found  a  dark 
elfish  figure  standing  outside  their  den,  and  dancing  with  excite- 
ment. 

'  Wouldn't  yo  like  to  ketch  us — wouldn't  yo  ? — wouldn't  yo  ? ' 
screeched  the  child,  beside  herself.  She  too  had  been  watching, 
had  seen  the  light  vanish. 

'  Yo'll  have  t'  parish  up  after  yo  if  yo  doan't  howd  your 
tongue,'  said  David  roughly. 

And  creeping  into  their  den  he  relit  the  lantern.  Then  he 
pulled  out  a  watch,  borrowed  from  the  same  friend  who  had  pro- 
vided the  lantern.  Past  nine.  Two  hours  and  more  before  they 
need  think  of  starting  downwards  for  the  Pool. 

Louie  condescended  to  come  in  again,  and  the  stone  was  drawn 
close.  But  how  fierce  the  wind  had  grown,  and  how  nipping  was 
the  air !  David  shivered,  and  looked  about  for  the  rugs.  He 
wrapt  Louie  in  the  horse-rug,  which  was  heaviest,  and  tucked  the 
blanket  round  himself. 

'  Howd  that  tight  round  yo,'  he  commanded,  struck  with  an 
uneasy  sense  of  responsibility,  as  he  happened  to  notice  how 
starved  she  looked,  '  an  goo  to  sleep  if  yo  want  to.  I'll  wake  yo 
— I'm  gooin  to  read.' 

Louie  rolled  the  rug  round  her  chrysalis-like,  and  then,  dis- 
daining the  rest  of  David's  advice,  sat  bolt  upright  against  the 
rock,  her  wide-open  eyes  staring  defiantly  at  all  within  their 
ken. 


58  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

The  mintites  went  by.  David  sat  close  up  against  the  lantern, 
bitterly  cold,  but  reading  voraciously.  At  last,  however,  a 
sharper  gust  than  usual  made  him  look  up  and  turn  restive. 
Louie  still  sat  in  the  opposite  corner  as  stiffly  as  before,  but  over 
the  great  staring  eyes  the  lids  had  just  fallen,  sorely  against  their 
owner's  will ;  the  head  was  dropping  against  the  rock  ;  the  child 
was  fast  asleep.  It  occurred  to  David  she  looked  odd ;  the  face 
seemed  so  grey  and  white.  He  instinctively  took  his  own  blanket 
and  put  it  over  her.  The  silence  and' helplessness  of  her  sleep 
seemed  to  appeal  to  him,  to  change  his  mood  towards  her,  for  the 
action  was  brotherly  and  tender.  Then  he  pushed  the  stone 
aside  and  crept  out  on  to  the  moor. 

There  he  stood  for  a  while,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
marking  time  to  warm  himself.  How  the  wind  bit  to  be  sure  !— 
and  it  would  be  colder  still  by  dawn. 

The  pool  showed  dimly  beneath  him,  and  the  gruesome  hour 
was  stealing  on  them  fast.  His  heart  beat  quick.  The  weirdness 
and  loneliness  of  the  night  came  home  to  him  more  than  they 
had  done  yet.  The  old  woman  dragged  to  her  death,  the  hooting 
crowd,  the  inexorable  parson,  the  struggle  in  the  water,  the  last 
gurgling  cry — the  vision  rose  before  him  on  the  dark  with  an  ever 
ghastlier  plainness  than  a  while  ago  on  the  mountain-top.  How 
had  'Lias  seen  her  that  the  sight  had  changed  him  so  ?  Did  she 
come  to  him  with  her  drowned  face  and  floating  grey  hair — grip 
him  with  her  cold  hands  ?  David,  beginning  to  thrill  in  good 
earnest,  obstinately  filled  in  the  picture  with  all  the  horrible 
detail  he  could  think  of,  so  as  to  harden  himself.  Only  now  he 
wished  with  all  his  heart  that  Louie  were  safe  at  home. 

An  idea  occurred  to  him.  He  smiled  at  it,  turned  it  over, 
gradually  resolved  upon  it.  She  would  lead  him  a  life  afterward, 
but  what  matter  ? — let  her  ! 

From  the  far  depths  of  the  unseen  valley  a  sound  struck 
upwards,  piercing  through  the  noises  of  river  and  wind.  It  was 
the  clock  of  Clough  End  church,  tolling  eleven. 

Well,  one  could  not  stand  perishing  there  another  hour.  He 
stooped  down  and  crawled  in  beside  Louie.  She  was  sleeping 
heavily,  the  added  warmth  of  David's  blanket  conducing  thereto. 
He  hung  over  her,  watching  her  breathing  with  a  merry  look, 
which  gradually  became  a  broad  grin.  It  was  a  real  shame — she 
would  be  just  mad  when  she  woke  up.  But  mermaids  were  all 
stuff,  and  Jenny  Crum  would  '  skeer '  her  to  death.  Just  in 
proportion  as  the  adventure  became  more  awesome  and  more  real 
did  the  boy's  better  self  awake.  He  grew  soft  for  his  sister, 
while,  as  he  proudly  imagined,  iron  for  himself. 

He  crept  in  under  the  blanket  carefully  so  as  not  to  disturb 
her.  He  was  too  tired  and  excited  to  read.  He  would  think  the 
hour  out.  So  he  lay  staring  at  the  opposite  wall  of  rock,  at  its 
crevices,  and  creeping  ants,  at  the  odd  lights  and  shadows  thrown 
by  the  lantern,  straining  his  eyes  every  now  and  then,  that  he 
might  be  the  more  sure  how  wide  awake  they  were. 


CHAP,  v  CHILDHOOD  59 

Louie  stretched  herself.  What  was  the  matter  ?  Where  was 
she  ?  What  was  that  smell  ?  She  leant  forward  on  her  elbow. 
The  lantern  was  just  going  out,  and  smelt  intolerably.  A  cold 
grey  light  was  in  the  little  den.  What  ?  Where  ? 

A  loud  wail  broke  the  morning  silence,  and  David,  sleeping 
profoundly,  his  open  mouth  just  showing  above  the  horse-rug, 
was  roused  by  a  shower  of  blows  from  Louie's  fists.  He  stirred 
uneasily,  tried  to  escape  them  by  plunging  deeper  into  the  folds, 
but  they  pursued  him  vindictively. 

4  Give  ower ! '  he  said  at  last,  striking  back  at  random,  and 
then  sitting  up  he  rubbed  his  eyes.  There  was  Louie  sitting 
opposite  to  him,  crying  great  tears  of  rage  and  pain,  now  rocking 
her  ankle  as  if  it  hurt  her,  and  now  dealing  cuff's  at  him. 

He  hastily  pulled  out  his  watch.     Half-past  four  o'clock  ! 

'  Yo  great  gonner,  yo  ! '  sobbed  Louie,  her  eyes  blazing  at 
him  through  her  tears.  '  Yo  good-for-nowt,  yo  muffin-yed,  yo 
donkey  ! '  And  so  on  through  all  the  words  of  reviling  known  to 
the  Derbyshire  child.  David  looked  extremely  sheepish  under 
them. 

Then  suddenly  he  put  his  head  down  on  his  knees  and  shook 
with  laughter.  The  absurdity  of  it  all — of  their  preparations,  of 
his  own  terrors,  of  the  disturbance  they  had  made,  all  to  end  in 
this  flat  and  futile  over-sleeping,  seized  upon  him  so  that  he 
could  not  control  himself.  He  laughed  till  he  cried,  while  Louie 
hit  and  abused  him  and  cried  too.  But  her  crying  had  a  differ- 
ent note,  and  at  last  he  looked  up  at  her,  sobered. 

'  Howd  your  tongue  ! — an  doan't  keep  bully-raggin  like  'at ! 
What's  t'  matter  wi  yo  ? ' 

For  answer,  she  rolled  over  on  the  rock  and  lay  on  her  face, 
howling  with  pain.  David  sprang  up  and  bent  over  her. 

*  What  iver's  t'  matter  wi  yo,  Louie  ? ' 

But  she  kept  him  off  like  a  wild  cat,  and  he  could  make 
nothing  of  her  till  her  passion  had  spent  itself  and  she  was  quiet 
again,  from  sheer  exhaustion. 

Then  David,  who  had  been  standing  near,  shivering,  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  tried  again. 

'  Now,  Louie,  do  coom  home, '  he  said  appealingly.  '  I  can  find 
yo  a  place  in  t'  stable  ull  be  warmer  nor  this.  You  be  parished 
if  yo  stay  here.'  For,  ignorant  as  he  was,  her  looks  began  to 
frighten  him. 

Louie  would  have  liked  never  to  speak  to  him  again.  The 
thought  of  the  blue  cotton  and  of  her  own  lost  chance  seemed  to 
be  burning  a  hole  in  her.  But  the  stress  of  his  miserable  look 
drew  her  eyes  open  whether  she  would  or  no,  and  when  she  saw 
him  her  self-pity  overcame  her. 

'  I  conno  walk,'  she  said,  with  a  sudden  loud  sob.  'It's  my 
leg.' 

'  What's  wrong  wi't  ? '  said  David,  inspecting  it  anxiously. 
'  It's  got  th'  cowcl  in  't,  that's  what  it  is  ;  it's  th'  rheumatics,  I 
speck.  Tak  howd  on  me,  I'll  help  yo  down.' 


60  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

And  with  much  coaxing  on  his  part  and  many  cries  and 
outbursts  on  hers  he  got  her  up  at  last,  and  out  of  the  den.  He 
had  tied  his  tin  box  across  his  back,  and  Louie,  with  the  rugs 
wrapped  about  her,  clung,  limping,  and  with  teeth  chattering,  on 
to  his  arm.  The  child  was  in  the  first  throes  of  a  sharp  attack  of 
rheumatism,  and  half  her  joints  were  painful. 

That  was  a  humiliating  descent !  A  cold  grey  morning  was 
breaking  over  the  moor  ;  the  chimneys  of  the  distant  cotton-towns 
rose  out  of  mists,  under  a  sky  streaked  with  windy  cloud.  The 
Mermaid's  Pool,  as  they  passed  it,  looked  chill  and  mocking  ;  and 
the  world  altogether  felt  so  raw  and  lonely  that  David  welcomed 
the  first  sheep  they  came  across  with  a  leap  of  the  heart,  and 
positively  hungered  for  a  first  sight  of  the  farm.  How  he  got 
Louie — in  whose  cheeks  the  fever-spots  were  rising — over  the  river 
he  never  quite  remembered.  But  at  last  he  had  dragged  her  up 
the  hill,  through  the  fields  close  to  the  house,  where  the  lambs 
were  huddling  in  the  nipping  dawn  beside  their  mothers,  and  into 
the  farmyard. 

The  house  rose  before  them  grey  and  frowning.  The  lower 
windows  were  shuttered  ;  in  the  upper  ones  the  blinds  were  pulled 
closely  down ;  not  a  sign  of  life  anywhere.  Yes  ;  the  dogs  had 
heard  them  !  Such  a  barking  as  began  !  Jock,  in  his  kennel  by 
the  front  door,  nearly  burst  his  chain  in  his  joyful  efforts  to  get 
at  them ;  while  Tib,  jumping  the  half-door  of  the  out-house  in 
the  back  yard,  where  he  had  been  curled  up  in  a  heap  of  bracken, 
leapt  about  them  and  barked  like  mad. 

Louie  sank  down  crying  and  deathly  pale  on  a  stone  by  the 
stable  door. 

'They'll  hear  that  fast  enoof,'  said  David,  looking  anxiously 
up  at  the  shut  windows. 

But  the  dogs  went  on  barking,  and  nothing  happened.  Ten 
minutes  of  chilly  waiting  passed  away. 

'  Tak  him  away,  do ! '  she  cried,  as  Tib  jumped  up  at  her. 
'  No,  I  woan't ! — I  woan't ! ' 

The  last  words  rose  to  a  shriek,  as  David  tried  to  persuade  her 
to  go  into  the  stable,  and  let  him  make  her  a  bed  in  the  straw. 
He  stood  looking  at  her  in  despair.  They  had  always  supposed 
they  would  be  locked  out  ;  but  surely  the  sleepers  inside  must 
hear  the  dogs.  He  turned  and  stared  at  the  house,  hungering 
for  some  sign  of  life  in  it.  Uncle  Reuben  would  hear  them — 
Uncle  Beuben  would  let  them  in  ! 

But  the  blinds  of  the  top  room  never  budged.  Louie,  with 
her  head  against  the  stable-door,  and  her  eyes  shut,  went  on 
convulsively  sobbing,  while  Tibby  sniffed  about  her  for  sympathy. 
And  the  bitter  wind  coming  from  the  Scout  whistled  through  the 
yard  and  seemed  to  cut  the  shivering  child  like  a  knife. 

'  111  mak  a  clunter  agen  th'  window  wi  some  gravel,'  said 
David  at  last,  in  desperation.  And  he  picked  up  a  handful  and 
threw  it,  first  cautiously,  then  recklessly.  Yes  ! — at  last  a  hand 
moved  the  blind — a  hand  the  children  knew  well,  and  a  face 


CHAP.  V  CHILDHOOD  61 

appeared  to  one  side  of  it.  Hannah  Grieve  had  never  looked  so 
forbidding  as  at  that  moment.  The  boy  caught  one  glance  of  a 
countenance  pale  with  wrath  and  sleeplessness ;  of  eyes  that 
seemed  to  blaze  at  them  through  the  window ;  then  the  blind 
fell.  He  waited  breathlessly  for  minute  after  minute.  Not  a 
sound. 

Furiously  he  stooped  for  more  gravel,  and  flung  it  again  and 
again.  For  an  age,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  no  more  notice  was 
taken.  At  last,  there  was  an  agitation  in  the  blind,  as  though 
more  than  one  person  was  behind  it.  It  was  Hannah  who  lifted 
it  again  ;  but  David  thought  he  caught  a  motion  of  her  arm  as 
though  she  were  holding  some  one  else  back.  The  lad  pointed 
excitedly  to  Louie. 

'  She's  took  bad  ! '  he  shouted.  '  Uncle  Reuben  ! — Uncle 
Reuben  ! — cooin  down  an  see  for  yorsel.  If  yo  let  her  in,  yo  can 
keep  me  out  as  long  as  yo  like  ! ' 

Hannah  looked  at  him,  and  at  the  figure  huddled  against  the 
stable-door — looked  deliberately,  and  then,  as  deliberately,  pulled 
the  blind  down  lower  than  before,  and  not  a  sign  of  Reuben 
anywhere. 

A  crimson  flame  sprang  to  David's  cheek.  He  rushed  at  the 
door,  and  while  with  one  hand  he  banged  away  at  the  old  knocker, 
he  thumped  with  the  other,  kicking  lustily  the  while  at  the  panels, 
till  Louie,  almost  forgetting  her  pains  in  the  fierce  excitement  of 
the  moment,  thought  he  would  kick  them  in.  In  the  intervals  of 
his  blows,  David  could  hear  voices  inside  in  angry  debate. 

'  Uncle  Reuben  ! '  he  shouted,  stopping  the  noise  for  a  moment, 
'  Uncle  Reuben,  Louie's  turned  sick  !  She's  clemmed  wi  t'  cold. 
If  yo  doan't  open  th'  door,  I'll  go  across  to  Wigson's,  and  tell  'em 
as  Louie's  parishin,  an  yo're  bein  th'  death  on  her.' 

The  bolt  shot  back,  and  there  stood  Reuben,  his  red  hair 
sticking  up  wildly  from  his  head,  his  frame  shaking  with  unusual 
excitement. 

'  What  are  yo  makin  that  roompus  for,  Davy  ? '  began  Reuben, 
with  would-be  severity.  '  Ha  done  wi  yo,  or  I'll  have  to  tak  a 
stick  to  yo.' 

But  the  boy  stood  akimbo  on  the  steps,  and  the  old  farmer 
shrank  before  him,  as  David's  black  eye  travelled  past  him  to  a 
gaunt  figure  on  the  stairs. 

'  Yo'll  tak  noa  stick  to  me,  Uncle  Reuben.  I'll  not  put  up  wi 
it,  and  yo  know  it.  I'm  goin  to  bring  Louie  in.  "We've  bin  on  fc' 
moor  by  t'  Pool  lookin  for  th'  owd  witch,  an  we  both  on  us  fell 
asleep,  an  Louie's  took  the  rheumatics. — Soatheer. — Stan  out  o'  t' 
way. ' 

And  running  back  to  Louie,  who  cried  out  as  he  lifted  her  up, 
he  half  carried,  half  dragged  her  in. 

'Why,  she's  like  death,'  cried  Reuben.  'Hannah!  summat 
hot — at  woonst.' 

But  Hannah  did  not  move.  She  stood  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs,  barring  the  way,  the  chill  morning  light  falling  on  her 


62  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

threatening  attitude,  her  grey  dishevelled  hair  and  all  the  squalid 
disarray  of  her  dress. 

'  Them  as  doos  like  beggar's  brats,'  she  said  grimly,  '  may  fare 
like  'em.  /'ll  do  nowt  for  'em.' 

The  lad  came  up  to  her,  his  look  all  daring  and  resolution — his 
sister  on  his  arm.  But  as  he  met  the  woman's  expression,  his  lips 
trembled,  he  suddenly  broke  down. 

'  Now,  look  here,'  he  cried,  with  a  sob  in  his  throat.  '  I  know 
we're  beggar's  brats.  I  know  yo  hate  th'  sect  on  us.  But  I  wor 
t'  worst.  I'm  t'  biggest.  Tak  Louie  in,  and  bully-rag  me  as 
mich  as  yo  like.  Louie — Louie  ! '  and  he  hung  over  her  in  a 
frenzy,  '  wake  up,  Louie  ! ' 

But  the  child  was  insensible.  Fatigue,  the  excitement  of  the 
struggle,  the  anguish  of  movement  had  done  their  work — she  lay 
like  a  log  upon  his  arm. 

'She's  fainted,'  said  Hannah,  recognising  the  fact  with  a  sort 
of  fierce  reluctance.  'Tak  her  up,  an  doan't  stan  blatherin 
theer. ' 

And  she  moved  out  of  the  way. 

The  boy  gathered  up  the  thin  figure,  and,  stumbling  over  the 
tattered  rugs,  carried  her  up  by  a  superhuman  effort. 

Reuben  leant  against  the  passage  wall,  staring  at  his  wife. 

'  Yo're  a  hard  woman,  Hannah — a  hard  woman,'  he  said  to  her 
under  his  breath,  in  a  low,  shaken  voice.  '  An  yo  coed  'em 
beggar's  brats — oh  Lord — Lord  ! ' 

'  Howd  your  tongue,  an  blow  up  t'  fire,'  was  all  the  reply  she 
vouchsafed  him,  and  Reuben  obeyed. 

Meanwhile  upstairs  Louie  had  been  laid  on  her  bed.  Con- 
sciousness had  come  back,  and  she  was  moaning. 

David  stood  beside  her  in  utter  despair.  He  thought  she  was 
going  to  die,  and  he  had  done  it.  At  last  he  sank  down  beside 
her,  and  flinging  an  arm  round  her,  he  laid  his  hot  cheek  to  her 
icy  one. 

'  Louie,  doan't — doan't — I'll  tak  yo  away  from  here,  Louie, 
when  I  can.  I'll  tak  care  on  yo,  Louie.  Doan't,  Louie, — doan't ! ' 

His  whole  being  seemed  rent  asunder  by  sympathy  and  remorse. 
Uncle  Reuben,  coming  up  with  some  hot  gruel,  found  him 
sitting  on  the  bed  beside  his  sister,  on  whom  he  had  heaped  all 
the  clothing  he  could  find,  the  tears  running  down  his  cheeks. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FROM  that  night  forward,  David  looked  upon  the  farm  and  all  his 
life  there  with  other  eyes. 

Up  till  now,  in  spite  of  the  perennial  pressure  of  Hannah's 
tyrannies,  which,  however,  weighed  much  less  upon  him  than 
Upon  Louie,  he  had  been — as  he  had  let  Reuben  see — happy 
enough.  The  open-air  life,  the  animals,  his  books,  out  of  all  of 
them  he  managed  to  extract  a  very  fair  daily  sum  of  enjoyment. 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  OS 

And  he  had  been  content  enough  with  his  daily  tasks — herding 
the  sheep,  doing  the  rough  work  of  the  stable  and  cow-house, 
running  Aunt  Hannah's  errands  with  the  donkey-cart  to  Clough 
End,  helping  in  the  haymaking  and  the  sheep-shearing,  or  the 
driving  of  stock  to  and  from  the  various  markets  Reuben  fre- 
quented. All  these  things  he  had  done  with  a  curious  placidity, 
a  detachment  and  yet  readiness  of  mind,  as  one  who  lends 
himself,  without  reluctance,  to  a  life  not  his  own.  It  was  this 
temper  mainly,  helped,  no  doubt,  by  his  unusual  tastes  and  his 
share  of  foreign  blood  and  looks,  which  had  set  him  apart  from 
the  other  lads  of  his  own  class  in  the  neighbourhood.  He  had 
few  friends  of  his  own  age,  yet  he  was  not  unpopular,  except, 
perhaps,  with  an  overbearing  animal  like  Jim  Wigson,  who  in- 
stinctively looked  upon  other  people's  brains  as  an  offence  to  his 
own  muscular  pretensions. 

But  his  Easter  Eve  struggle  with  Hannah  closed,  as  it  were, 
a  childhood,  which,  though  hard  and  loveless,  had  been  full  of 
compensations  and  ignorant  of  its  own  worst  wants.  It  woke  in 
him  the  bitterness  of  the  orphan  dependant,  who  feels  himself 
a  burden  and  loathes  his  dependence.  That  utter  lack  of  the 
commonest  natural  affection,  in  which  he  and  Louie  had  been 
brought  up — for  Reuben's  timorous  advances  had  done  but  little 
to  redress  the  balance — had  not  troubled  him  much,  till  suddenly 
it  was  writ  so  monstrous  large  in  Hannah's  refusal  to  take  pity  on 
the  fainting  and  agonised  Louie.  Thenceforward  every  morsel  of 
food  he  took  at  her  hands  seemed  to  go  against  him.  They  were 
paupers,  and  Aunt  Hannah  hated  them.  The  fact  had  been 
always  there,  but  it  had  never  meant  anything  substantial  to  him 
till  now.  Now,  at  last,  that  complete  dearth  of  love,  in  which  he 
had  lived  since  his  father  died,  began  to  react  in  revolt  and  dis- 
content. 

The  crisis  may  have  been  long  preparing,  those  words  of  his 
uncle  as  to  his  future,  as  well  as  the  incident  of  their  locking  out, 
may  have  had  something  to  say  to  it.  Anyway,  a  new  reflective 
temper  set  in.  The  young  immature  creature  became  self-con- 
scious, began  to  feel  the  ferments  of  growth.  The  ambition  and 
the  restlessness  his  father  had  foreseen,  with  dying  eyes,  began  to 
stir. 

Reuben's  qualms  returned  upon  him.  On  the  15th  of  May,  he 
and  David  went  to  Woodhead,  some  sixteen  or  seventeen  miles 
off,  to  receive  the  young  stock  from  the  Yorkshire  breeders, 
which  were  to  be  grazed  on  the  farm  during  the  summer.  In 
general,  David  had  taken  the  liveliest  interest  in  the  animals,  in 
the  number  and  quality  of  them,  in  the  tariff  to  be  paid  for  them, 
and  the  long  road  there  and  back  had  been  cheered  for  the 
farmer  by  the  lad's  chatter,  and  by  the  athletic  antics  he  was 
always  playing  with  any  handy  gate  or  tree  which  crossed  their 
path. 

'  Them  heifers  ull  want  a  deal  o'  grass  puttin  into  'em  afoor 
they'll  be  wuth  onybody's  buyin,  Davy,'  said  Reuben,  inspecting 


04  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

his  mixed  herd  with  a  critical  eye  from  a  roadside  bank,  as  they 
climbed  the  first  hill  on  their  return  journey. 

'  Aye,  they're  a  poor  lot,'  returned  David,  shortly,  and  walked 
on  as  far  in  front  of  his  uncle  as  might  be,  with  his  head  in  the 
air  and  his  moody  look  fixed  on  the  distance. 

'  T  Wigsons  ull  be  late  gettin  whoam,'  began  Reuben  again, 
with  an  uneasy  look  at  the  boy.  '  Owd  Wigson  wor  that  full  up 
wi  yell  when  I  last  seed  him  they'll  ha  a  job  to  get  him  started 
straight  this  neet.' 

To  this  remark  David  had  nothing  at  all  to  say,  though  in 
general  he  had  a  keen  neighbourly  relish  for  the  misdeeds  of  the 
Wigsons.  Reuben  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  him.  How- 
ever, a  mile  further  on  he  made  another  attempt : 

'  Lord,  how  those  Yorkshire  breeders  did  talk  !  Yo'd  ha  thowt 
they'd  throw  their  jaws  off  the  hinges.  An  a  lot  o'  gimcrack 
notions  as  iver  wor — wi  their  new  foods,  an  their  pills  an 
strengthening  mixtures — messin  wi  cows  as  though  they  wor 
humans.  Why  conno  they  leave  God  Awmighty  alone  ?  He  can 
bring  a  calvin  cow  through  beawt  ony  o'  their  meddlin,  I'll  up- 
howd  yo ! ' 

But  still  not  a  word  from  the  lad  in  front.  Reuben  might  as 
well  have  talked  to  the  wall  beside  him.  He  had  grown  used  to 
the  boy's  companionship,  and  the  obstinate  silence  which  David 
still  preserved  from  hour  to  hour  as  they  drove  their  stock  home- 
wards made  a  sensible  impression  on  him. 

Inside  the  house  there  was  a  constant,  though  in  general  a 
silent,  struggle  going  on  between  the  boy  and  Hannah  on  the 
subject  of  Louie.  Louie,  after  the  escapade  of  Easter  Eve,  was 
visited  with  a  sharp  attack  of  inflammatory  rheumatism,  only  just 
stopping  short  of  rheumatic  fever.  Hannah  got  a  doctor,  and 
tended  her  sufficiently  while  the  worst  lasted,  partly  because  she 
was,  after  all,  no  monster,  but  only  a  commonly  sordid  and  hard- 
natured  woman,  and  partly  because  for  a  day  or  two  Louie's  state 
set  her  pondering,  perforce,  what  might  be  the  effect  on  Mr. 
Gurney's  remittances  if  the  child  incontinently  died.  This 
thought  undoubtedly  quickened  whatever  natural  instincts  might 
be  left  in  Hannah  Grieve  ;  and  the  child  had  her  doctor,  and  the 
doctor's  orders  were  more  or  less  followed. 

But  when  she  came  downstairs  again — a  lanky,  ghostly  crea- 
ture, much  grown,  her  fierce  black  eyes  more  noticeable  than 
ever  in  her  pinched  face — Hannah's  appetite  for  '  snipin ' — to  use 
the  expressive  Derbyshire  word — returned  upon  her.  The  child 
was  almost  bullied  into  her  bed  again — or  would  have  been  if 
David  had  not  found  ways  of  preventing  it.  He  realised  for  the 
first  time  that,  as  the  young  and  active  male  of  the  household, 
he  was  extremely  necessary  to  Hannah's  convenience,  and  now 
whenever  Hannah  ill-treated  Louie  her  convenience  suffered. 
David  disappeared.  Her  errands  were  undone,  the  wood  uncut, 
and  coals  and  water  had  to  be  carried  as  they  best  could.  As  to 
reprisals,  with  a  strong  boy  of  fourteen,  grown  very  nearly 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  65 

to  a  man's  height,  Hannah  found  herself  a  good  deal  at  a  loss. 
'  Bully-raggin '  he  took  no  more  account  of  than  of  a  shower  of 
rain ;  blows  she  instinctively  felt  it  would  have  been  dangerous  to 
attempt ;  and  as  to  deprivation  of  food,  the  lad  seemed  to  thrive 
on  hunger,  and  never  whistled  so  loudly  as  when,  according  to 
Hannah's  calculations,  he  must  have  been  as  '  keen-bitten  as  a 
hawk.'  For  the  first  time  in  her  life  Hannah  was  to  some  extent 
tamed.  When  there  was  business  about  she  generally  felt  it 
expedient  to  let  Louie  alone. 

But  this  sturdy  protection  was  more  really  a  matter  of  roused 
pride  and  irritation  on  David's  part  than  of  brotherly  love.  It 
was  the  tragedy  of  Louie  Grieve's  fate — whether  as  child  or 
woman — that  she  was  not  made  to  be  loved.  Whether  she  could 
love,  her  story  will  show  ;  but  to  love  her  when  you  were  close  to 
her  was  always  hard.  How  different  the  days  would  have  been 
for  the  moody  lad,  who  had  at  last  learnt  to  champion  her,  if 
their  common  isolation  and  dependence  had  but  brought  out  in 
her  towards  him  anything,  clinging — anything  confidential,  any 
true  spirit  of  comradeship  !  On  the  contrary,  while  she  was  still 
ill  in  bed,  and  almost  absolutely  dependent  on  what  he  might 
choose  to  do  for  her,  she  gibed  and  flouted  him  past  bearing, 
mainly,  no  doubt,  for  the  sake  of  breaking  the  tedium  of  her  con- 
finement a  little.  And  when  she  was  about  again,  and  he  was 
defending  her  weakness  from  Aunt  Hannah,  it  seemed  to  him 
that  she  viewed  his  proceedings  rather  with  a  malicious  than  a 
grateful  eye.  It  amused  and  excited  her  to  see  him  stand  up  to 
Hannah,  but  he  got  little  reward  from  her  for  his  pains. 

She  was,  as  it  were,  always  watching  him  with  a  sort  of  secret 
discontent.  He  did  not  suit  her — was  not  congenial  to  her. 
Especially  was  she  exasperated  now  more  than  ever  by  his  bookish 
tastes.  Possibly  she  was  doubly  jealous  of  his  books;  at  any  rate, 
unless  ho  had  been  constantly  on  his  guard,  she  would  have 
hidden  them,  or  done  them  a  mischief  whenever  she  could,  in  her 
teasing,  magpie  way. 

One  morning,  in  the  grey  summer  dawn,  Louie  had  just 
wakened,  and  was  staring  sleepily  at  the  door,  when,  all  of  a 
sudden,  it  opened — very  quietly,  as  though  pushed  by  some  one 
anxious  not  to  make  a  noise — and  Reuben's  head  looked  round  it. 
Louie,  amazed,  woke  up  in  earnest,  and  Reuben  came  stealthily 
in.  He  had  his  hat  and  stick  under  his  arm,  and  one  hand  held 
his  boots,  while  he  stepped  noiselessly  in  his  stocking  feet  across 
the  room  to  where  Louie  lay- — '  Louie,  are  yo  awake  ? ' 

The  child  stared  up  at  him,  seeing  mostly  his  stubble  of  red 
hair,  which  came  like  a  grotesque  halo  between  her  and  the  wall. 
Then  she  nodded. 

'  Doan't  let  yor  aunt  hear  nothin,  Louie.  She  thinks  I'm  gone 
out  to  th'  calves.  But,  Louie,  that  merchant  I  towd  yo  on  came 
yesterday,  an  he  wor  a  hard  un,  he  wor — as  tough  as  nails,  a 
sight  worse  nor  owd  Croker  to  deal  wi,  ony  day  in  th'  week.  I 


66  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

could  mak  nowt  on  him — an  lie  gan  me  sich  a  poor  price,  I  darn't 
tak  a  penny  on  't  from  your  aunt — noa,  I  darn't,  Louie, — not  if  it 
wor  iver  so.  She'll  be  reet  down  mad  when  she  knaws — an  I'm 
real  sorry  about  that  bit  dress  o'  yourn,  Louie.' 

He  stood  looking  down  at  her,  his  spectacles  falling  forward 
on  his  nose,  the  corners  of  his  mouth  drooping — a  big  ungainly 
culprit. 

For  a  second  or  two  the  child  was  quite  still,  nothing  but  the 
black  eyes  and  tossed  masses  of  hair  showing  above  the  sheet. 
Then  the  eyes  blinked  suddenly,  and  flinging  out  her  hand  at  him 
with  a  passionate  gesture,  as  though  to  push  him  away,  she  turned 
on  her  face  and  drew  the  bedclothes  over  her  head. 

'  Louie  ! '  he  said — '  Louie  ! ' 

But  she  made  no  sign,  and,  at  last,  with  a  grotesquely  con- 
cerned face,  he  went  out  of  the  room  and  downstairs,  hanging 
his  head. 

Out  of  doors,  he  found  David  already  at  work  in  the  cowhouse, 
but  as  surly  and  uncommunicative  as  before  when  he  was  spoken 
to.  That  the  lad  had  turned  '  agen  his  wark,'  and  was  on  his  way 
to  hate  the  farm  and  all  it  contained,  was  plain  even  to  Reuben. 
"Why  was  he  so  glum  and  silent — why  didn't  he  speak  up? 
Perhaps  he  would,  Reuben's  conscience  replied,  if  it  were  con- 
veyed to  him  that  he  possessed  a  substantial  portion  of  six 
hundred  pounds  ! 

The  boy  knew  that  his  uncle  watched  him — anxiously,  as  one 
watches  something  explosive  and  incalculable — and  felt  a  sort  of 
contempt  for  himself  that  nothing  practical  came  of  his  own 
revolt  and  discontent.  But  he  was  torn  with  indecision.  How 
to  leave  Louie — what  to  do  with  himself  without  a  farthing  in  the 
world — whom  to  go  to  for  advice?  He  thought  often  of  Mr. 
Ancrum,  but  a  fierce  distaste  for  chapels  and  ministers  had  been 
growing  on  him,  and  he  had  gradually  seen  less  and  less  of  the 
man  who  had  been  the  kind  comrade  and  teacher  of  his  early 
childhood.  His  only  real  companions  during  this  year  of  moody 
adolescence  were  his  books.  From  the  forgotten  deposit  in  the 
old  meal-ark  upstairs,  which  had  yielded  '  Paradise  Lost,'  he  drew 
other  treasures  by  degrees.  He  found  there,  in  all,  some  tattered 
leaves — three  or  four  books  altogether — of  Pope's  '  Iliad,'  about 
half  of  Foxe's  '  Martyrs ' — the  rest  having  been  used  apparently 
by  the  casual  nurses,  who  came  to  tend  Reuben's  poor  mother  in 
her  last  days,  to  light  the  fire — a  complete  copy  of  Locke  '  On  the 
Human  Understanding,'  and  various  volumes  of  old  Calvinist 
sermons,  which  he  read,  partly  because  his  reading  appetite  was 
insatiable,  partly  from  a  half -contemptuous  desire  to  find  out 
what  it  might  be  that  Uncle  Reuben  was  always  troubling  his 
head  about. 

As  to  'Lias  Dawson,  David  saw  nothing  of  him  for  many  long 
weeks  after  the  scene  which  had  led  to  the  adventure  of  the  Pool. 
He  heard  only  that  'Lias  was  '  bad,'  and  mostly  in  his  bed,  and 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  67 

feeling  a  little  guilty,  he  hardly  knew  why,  the  la,d  kept  away 
from  his  old  friend. 

Summer  and  the  early  autumn  passed  away.  October  brought 
a  spell  of  wintry  weather  ;  and  one  day,  as  he  was  bringing  the 
sheep  home,  he  met  old  Margaret,  'Lias's  wife.  She  stopped  and 
accosted  him. 

'  Why  doan't  yo  coom  and  see  'Lias  sometimes,  Davy,  my  lad  ? 
Yo  might  leeten  him  up  a  bit,  an'  he  wants  it,  t'  Lord  knows. 
He's  been  fearfu'  bad  in  his  sperrits  this  summer.' 

The  lad  stammered  out  some  sheepish  excuses,  and  soon  made 
his  way  over  to  Frimley  Moor.  But  the  visits  were  not  so  much 
pleasure  as  usual.  'Lias  was  very  feeble,  and  David  had  a  con- 
stant temptation  to  struggle  with.  He  understood  that  to  excite 
'Lias,  to  throw  him  again  into  the  frenzy  which  had  begotten  the 
vision  of  the  Pool,  would  be  a  cruel  act.  But  all  the  same  he 
found  it  more  and  more  difficult  to  restrain  himself,  to  keep  back 
the  questions  which  burnt  on  his  tongue. 

As  for  'Lias,  his  half -shut  eye  would  brighten  whenever  David 
showed  himself  at  the  door,  and  he  would  point  to  a  wooden 
stool  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire. 

'  Sit  tha  down,  lad.  Margret,  gie  him  soom  tay,'  or  '  Margret, 
yo'll  just  find  him  a  bit  oatcake.' 

And  then  the  two  would  fall  upon  their  books  together,  and 
the  conversation  would  glide  imperceptibly  into  one  of  those 
scenes  of  half -dramatic  impersonation,  for  which  David's  relish 
was  still  unimpaired. 

But  the  old  man  was  growing  much  weaker  ;  his  inventions 
had  less  felicity,  less  range  than  of  old  ;  and  the  watchful  Mar- 
garet, at  her  loom  in  the  corner,  kept  an  eye  on  any  signs  of  an 
undue  excitement,  and  turned  out  David  or  any  other  visitor, 
neck  and  crop,  without  scruple,  as  soon  as  it  seemed  to  her  that 
her  crippled  seer  was  doing  himself  a  mischief.  Poor  soul !  she 
had  lived  in  this  tumult  of  'Lias's  fancies  year  after  year,  till  the 
solid  world  often  turned  about  her.  And  she,  all  the  while,  so 
simple,  so  sane — the  ordinary  good  woman,  with  the  ordinary 
woman's  hunger  for  the  common  blessings  of  life — a  little  love,  a 
little  chat,  a  little  prosaic  well-being !  She  had  had  two  sons — 
they  were  gone.  She  had  been  the  proud  wife  '  o'  t'  cliverest 
mon  atwixt  Sheffield  an  Manchester,'  as  Frimley  and  the  adjacent 
villages  had  once  expressed  it,  when  every  mother  that  respected 
herself  sent  her  children  to  'Lias  Dawson's  school.  And  the 
mysterious  chances  of  a  summer  night  had  sent  home  upon  her 
hands  a  poor  incapable,  ruined  in  mind  and  body,  who  was  to 
live  henceforward  upon  her  charity,  wandering  amid  the  chaotic 
wreck  and  de"bris  of  his  former  self. 

Well,  she  took  up  her  burden  ! 

The  straggling  village  on  Frimley  Moor  was  mainly  inhabited 
by  a  colony  of  silk  hand-loom  weavers — the  descendants  of 
French  prisoners  in  the  great  war,  and  employed  for  the  most 
part  by  a  firm  at  Leek.  Very  dainty  work  was  done  at  Frimley, 


68  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

and  very  beautiful  stuffs  made.  The  craft  went  from  father  to 
son.  All  Margaret's  belongings  had  been  weavers  ;  but  'Lias,  in 
the  pride  of  his  schoolmaster's  position,  would  never  allow  his 
wife  to  use  the  trade  of  her  youth.  When  he  became  dependent 
on  her,  Margaret  bought  a  disused  loom  from  a  cousin,  had  it 
mended  and  repaired,  and  set  to  work.  Her  fingers  had  not  for- 
gotten their  old  cunning  ;  and  when  she  was  paid  for  her  first 
'cut,'  she  hurried  home  to  'Lias  with  a  reviving  joy  in  her 
crushed  heart.  Thenceforward,  she  lived  at  her  loom ;  she 
became  a  skilled  and  favoured  worker,  and  the  work  grew  dear 
to  her — first,  because  'Lias  lived  on  it,  and,  next,  because  the 
bright  roses  and  ribbon-patterns  she  wove  into  her  costly  stuffs 
were  a  perpetual  cheer  to  her.  The  moors  might  frown  outside, 
the  snow  might  drift  against  the  cottage  walls  :  Margaret  had 
always  something  gay  under  her  fingers,  and  threw  her  shuttle 
with  the  more  zest  the  darker  and  colder  grew  the  Derbyshire 
world  without. 

Naturally  the  result  of  this  long  concentration  of  effort  had 
been  to  make  the  poor  soul,  for  whom  each  day  was  lived  and 
fought,  the  apple  of  Margaret's  eye.  So  long  as  that  bent,  white 
form  sat  beside  her  fire,  Margaret  was  happy.  Her  heart  sank 
with  every  fresh  sign  of  age  and  weakness,  revived  with  every 
brighter  hour.  He  still  lorded  it  over  her  often,  as  he  had  done 
in  the  days  of  their  prosperity,  and  whenever  this  old  mood  came 
back  upon  him,  Margaret  could  have  cried  for  pleasure. 

The  natural  correlative  of  such  devotion  was  a  drying  up  of 
interest  in  all  the  world  beside.  Margaret  had  the  selfishness  of 
the  angelic  woman — everything  was  judged  as  it  affected  her 
idol.  So  at  first  she  took  no  individual  interest  in  David — he 
cheered  up  'Lias — she  had  no  other  thought  about  him. 

On  a  certain  November  day  David  was  sitting  opposite  to 
'Lias.  The  fire  burnt  between  them,  and  on  the  fire  was  a 
griddle,  whereon  Margaret  had  just  deposited  some  oatcakes  for 
tea.  The  old  man  was  sitting  drooped  in  his  chair,  his  chin  on 
his  breast,  his  black  eyes  staring  beyond  David  at  the  wall. 
David  was  seized  with  curiosity — what  was  he  thinking  about  ? — 
what  did  he  see?  There  was  a  mystery,  a  weirdness  about  the 
figure,  about  that  hungry  gaze,  which  tormented  him.  His 
temptation  returned  upon  him  irresistibly. 

'  'Lias,'  he  said,  bending  forward,  his  dark  cheek  flushing 
with  excitement,  '  Louie  and  I  went  up,  Easter  Eve,  to  t'  Pool, 
but  we  went  to  sleep  an  saw  nowt.  What  was't  yo  saw,  'Lias  ? 
Did  yo  see  her  for  sure  ? ' 

The  old  man  raised  his  head  frowning,  and  looked  at  the  boy. 
But  the  frown  was  merely  nervous,  he  had  heard  nothing.  On 
the  other  hand,  Margaret,  whom  David  had  supposed  to  be  in  the 
back  kitchen,  but  who  was  in  reality  a  few  steps  behind  him, 
mending  something  which  had  gone  wrong  in  her  loom,  ran  for- 
ward suddenly  to  the  fire,  and  bending  over  her  griddle  somehow 
promptly  threw  down  the  tongs,  making  a  clatter  and  commo- 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  69 

tion,  in  the  midst  of  which  the  cakes  caught,  and  old  'Lias  moved 
from  the  fender,  saying  fretfully, 

'Yo're  that  orkard  wi  things,  Margret,  yo're  like  a  dog 
dancin.' 

But  in  the  bustle  Margaret  had  managed  to  say  to  David, 
'  Howd  your  tongue,  noddle-yed,  will  yo  ? ' 

And  so  unexpected  was  the  lightning  from  her  usually  mild 
blue  eyes  that  David  sat  dumbfounded,  and  presently  sulkily  got 
up  to  go.  Margaret  followed  him  out  and  down  the  bit  of  garden. 

And  at  the  gate,  when  they  were  well  out  of  hearing  of  'Lias, 
she  fell  on  the  boy  with  a  torrent  of  words,  gripping  him  the 
while  with  her  long  thin  hand,  so  that  only  violence  could  have 
released  him.  Her  eyes  flamed  at  him  under  the  brown  woollen 
shawl  she  wore  pinned  under  her  chin  ;  the  little  emaciated 
creature  became  a  fury.  What  did  he  come  there  for,  '  moiderin 
'Lias  wi  his  divilments  '  ?  If  he  ever  said  a  word  of  such  things 
again,  she'd  lock  the  door  on  him,  and  he  might  go  to  Jenny 
Crum  for  his  tea.  Not  a  bite  or  a  sup  should  he  ever  have  in  her 
house  again. 

'  I  meant  no  harm,'  said  the  boy  doggedly.  '  It  wor  he  towd 
me  about  t'  witch — it  wor  he  as  put  it  into  our  yeds — Louie  an 
me.' 

Margaret  exclaimed.  So  it  was  he  that  got  'Lias  talking  about 
the  Pool  in  the  spring  !  Some  one  had  been  '  cankin  wi  him  about 
things  they  didn't  owt ' — that  she  knew — '  and  she  might  ha 
thowt  it  wor '  Davy.  For  that  one  day's  '  worritin  ov  him  '  she 
had  had  him  on  her  hands  for  weeks — off  his  sleep,  and  off  his 
feed,  and  like  a  blighted  thing.  'Aye,  it's  aw  play  to  yo,'  she 
said,  trembling  all  through  in  her  passion,  as  she  held  the  boy — 
'  it's  aw  play  to  yo  and  your  minx  of  a  sister.  An  if  it  means 
deein  to  the  old  man  hissel,  yo  don't  care!  "Margaret,"  says 
the  doctor  to  me  last  week,  ' '  if  you  can  keep  his  mind  quiet  he 
may  hang  on  a  bit.  But  you  munna  let  him  excite  hissel  about  owt 
— he  mun  tak  things  varra  easy.  He's  like  a  wilted  leaf — nobbut 
t'  least  thing  will  bring  it  down.  He's  worn  varra  thin  like,  heart 
an  lungs,  and  aw  t'  rest  of  him."  An  d'  yo  think  I'st  sit  still  an 
see  yo  murder  him — the  poor  lamb — afore  my  eyes — me  as  ha  got 
nowt  else  but  him  i'  t'  wide  warld  ?  No — yo  yoong  varlet — goo  an 
ast  soom  one  else  about  Jenny  Crum  if  yo  're  just  set  on  meddlin 
Wi  divil's  wark — but  yo  '11  no  trouble  my  'Lias. ' 

She  took  her  hands  off  him,  and  the  boy  was  going  away  in  a 
half -sullen  silence,  when  she  caught  him  again. 

'  "Who  towd  yo  about  'Lias  an  t'  Pool,  nobbut  'Lias  hissel  ? ' 

'  Uncle  Ecu  ben  towd  me  summat.' 

'Aye,  Reuben  Grieve — he  put  him  in  t'  carrier's  cart,  an 
behaved  moor  like  a  Christian  nor  his  wife — I  allus  mind  that  o' 
Reuben  Grieve,  when  foak  coe  him  a  foo.  Wai,  I'st  tell  yo,  Davy, 
an  if  iver  yo  want  to  say  a  word  about  Jenny  Crum  in  our  house 
afterwards,  yo  mun  ha  a  gritstone  whar  your  heart  owt  to  be — • 
that's  aw.' 


70  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

And  she  leant  over  the  wall  of  the  little  garden,  twisting  her 
apron  in  her  old,  tremulous  hands,  and  choking  down  the  tears 
which  had  begun  to  rise.  Then,  looking  straight  before  her,  and 
in  a  low,  plaintive  voice,  which  seemed  to  float  on  hidden  depths 
of  grief,  she  told  her  story. 

It  appeared  that  'Lias  had  been  '  queer '  a  good  while  before 
the  adventure  of  the  Pool.  But,  according  to  his  wife,  '  he  wor 
that  cliver  on  his  good  days,  foak  could  mak  shift  wi  him  on  his 
bad  days  ; '  the  school  still  prospered,  and  money  was  still  plentiful. 
Then,  all  of  a  sudden,  the  moorland  villages  round  were  over- 
taken by  an  epidemic  of  spirit-rapping  and  table-turning.  'It 
wor  sperrits  here,  sperrits  there,  sperrits  everywhere — t'  warld 
wor  gradely  swarmin  wi  'em,'  said  Margaret  bitterly.  It  was  all 
started,  apparently,  by  a  worthless  '  felly '  from  Castleton,  who 
had  a  great  reputation  as  a  medium,  and  would  come  over  on 
summer  evenings  to  conduct  seances  at  Frimley  and  the  places 
near.  'Lias,  already  in  an  excitable,  overworked  state,  was 
bitten  by  the  new  mania,  and  could  think  of  nothing  else. 

One  night  he  and  the  Castleton  medium  fell  talking  about 
Jenny  Orum,  the  witch  of  Kinder  Scout,  and  her  Easter  Eve 
performances.  The  medium  bet  'Lias  a  handsome  sum  that  he 
would  not  dare  face  her.  'Lias,  piqued  and  wrathful,  and  '  wi 
moor  yell  on  board  nor  he  could  reetly  stan,'  took  the  bet. 
Margaret  heard  nothing  of  it.  He  announced  on  Easter  Eve  that 
he  was  going  to  a  brother  in  Edale  for  the  Sunday,  and  gave  her 
the  slip.  She  saw  no  more  of  him  till  the  carrier  brought  home 
to  her,  on  the  Sunday  morning,  a  starved  and  pallid  object — '  gone 
clean  silly,  an  hutched  thegither  like  an  owd  man  o'  seventy — 
he  bein  fifty -six  by  his  reet  years.'  With  woe  and  terror  she 
helped  him  to  his  bed,  and  in  that  bed  he  stayed  for  more  than  a 
year,  while  everything  went  from  them — school  and  savings,  and 
all  the  joys  of  life. 

'  An  yo'll  be  wantin  to  know,  like  t'  rest  o'  'em,  what  he  saw  ! ' 
cried  Margaret  angrily,  facing  round  upon  the  boy,  whose  face 
was,  indeed,  one  question.  '  "Margaret,  did  he  tell  tha  what  t' 
witch  said  to  un  ? " — every  blatherin  idiot  i'  th'  parish  asked  me 
that,  wi  his  mouth  open,  till  I  cud  ha  stopped  my  ears  an  run 
wheniver  I  seed  a  livin  creetur.  What  do  I  keer  ? — what  doos  it 
matter  to  me  what  he  saw  ?  I  doan't  bleeve  he  saw  owt,  if  yo  ast 
me.  He  wor  skeert  wi  his  own  thinkins,  an  th'  cowd  gripped  him 
i'  th'  in'ards,  an  twisted  him  as  yo  may  twist  a  withe  of  hay — 
Aye !  it  wor  a  cruel  neet.  When  I  opened  t'  door  i'  t'  early 
mornin,  t'  garden  wor  aw  black — th'  ice  on  t'  reservoir  wor  inches 
thick.  Mony  a  year  afterwards  t'  foak  round  here  ud  talk  o'  that 
for  an  April  frost.  An  my  poor  'Lias — lost  on  that  fearfu  Scout 
— sleepin  out  wi'out  a  rag  to  cover  him,  an  skeert  soomhow — t' 
Lord  or  t'  Devil  knows  how  !  And  then  foak  ud  have  me  mak  a 
good  tale  out  o'  it — soomthin  to  gie  'em  a  ticklin  down  their  back- 
bane — soomthin  to  pass  an  evenin — Lord  !  ' 

The  wife's  voice  paused  abruptly  on  this  word  of  imprecation, 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  71 

or  appeal,  as  though  her  own  passion  choked  her.  David  stood 
beside  her  awkwardly,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  gravel,  wherewith  one 
foot  was  playing.  There  was  no  more  sullenness  in  his  expres- 
sion. 

Margaret's  hand  still  played  restlessly  with  the  handkerchief. 
Her  eyes  were  far  away,  her  mind  absorbed  by  the  story  of  her 
own  fate.  Bound  the  moorside,  on  which  the  cottage  was  built, 
there  bent  a  circling  edge  of  wood,  now  aflame  with  all  the  colour 
of  late  autumn.  Against  its  deep  reds  and  browns,  Margaret's 
small  profile  was  thrown  out — the  profile  already  of  the  old  woman, 
with  the  meeting  nose  and  chin,  the  hollow  cheek,  the  maze  of 
wrinkles  round  the  eyes.  Into  that  face,  worn  by  the  labour  and 
the  grief  of  the  poor — into  that  bending  figure,  with  the  peasant 
shawl  folded  round  the  head  and  shoulders — there  had  passed 
all  the  tragic  dignity  which  belongs  to  the  simple  and  heartfelt 
things  of  human  life,  to  the  pain  of  helpless  affection,  to  the 
yearning  of  irremediable  loss. 

The  boy  beside  her  was  too  young  to  feel  this.  But  he  felt 
more,  perhaps,  than  any  other  lad  of  the  moorside  could  have 
felt.  There  was,  at  all  times,  a  natural  responsiveness  in  him  of 
a  strange  kind,  vibrating  rather  to  pain  than  joy.  He  stood  by 
her,  embarrassed,  yet  drawn  to  her — waiting,  too,  as  it  seemed  to 
him,  for  something  more  that  must  be  coming. 

'  An  then,'  said  Margaret  at  last,  turning  to  him,  and  speaking 
more  quietly,  but  still  in  a  kind  of  tense  way,  '  then,  when  'Lias 
wor  took  bad,  yo  know,  Davy,  I  had  my  boys.  Did  yo  ever  hear 
tell  o'  what  came  to  'em,  Davy  ? ' 

The  boy  shook  his  head. 

'  Ah  ! '  she  said,  catching  her  breath  painfully,  '  they're  moast 
forgotten,  is  my  boys.  'Lias  had  been  seven  weeks  i'  his  bed,  an 
I  wor  noan  so  mich  cast  down — i'  those  days  I  had  a  sperrit  more  'n 
most.  I  thowt  th'  boys  ud  keer  for  us — we'd  gien  em  a  good 
bringin  up,  an  they  wor  boath  on  'em  larnin  trades  i'  Manchester. 
Yan  evenin — it  wor  that  hot  we  had  aw  t'  doors  an  windows 
open — theer  came  a  man  runnin  up  fro  t'  railway.  An  my  boys 
were  kilt,  Davy — boath  on  'em — i'  Duley  Moor  Tunnel.  They  wor 
coomin  to  spend  Sunday  wi  us,  an  it  wor  an  excursion  train — I 
niver  knew  t'  reets  on  't ! ' 

She  paused  and  gently  wiped  away  her  tears.  Her  passion  had 
all  ebbed. 

'  An  I  thowt  if  I  cud  ha  got  'em  home  an  buried  'em,  Davy, 
I  could  ha  borne  it  better.  But  they  wor  aw  crushed,  an  cut 
about,  an  riddlet  to  bits — they  wudna  let  me  ha  em.  And  so  we 
kep  it  fro  'Lias.  Soomtimes  I  think  he  knows  t'  boys  are  dead — 
an  then  soomtimes  he  frets  'at  they  doan't  coom  an  see  him. 
Fourteen  year  ago  !  An  I  goo  on  tellin  him  they'll  coom  soon. 
An  last  week,  when  I  towd  him  it,  I  thowt  to  mysel  it  wor  just 
th'  naked  truth  ! ' 

David  leant  over  the  gate,  pulling  at  some  withered  hollyhocks 
beside  it.  But  when,  after  a  minute  of  choking  silence,  Margaret 


72  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

caught  his  look,  she  saw,  though  he  tried  to  hide  it,  that  his  black 
eyes  were  swimming.  Her  full  heart  melted  altogether. 

'  Oh,  Davy,  I  meant  naw  offence  ! '  she  said,  catching  him  by 
the  arm  again.  '  Yo're  a  good  lad,  an  yo're  allus  a  welcome  sect 
to  that  poor  creetur.  But  yo'll  not  say  owt  to  trouble  him  again, 
laddie — will  yo?  If  he'd  yeerd  yo  just  now — but,  by  t'  Lord's 
blessin,  he  did  na — he'd  ha  worked  himsel  up  fearfu' !  I'd  ha  had 
naw  sleep  wi  him  for  neets — like  it  wor  i'  th'  spring.  Yo  munna 
— yo  munna  !  He's  all  I  ha — his  livin  's  my  livin,  Davy — an  when 
he's  took  away — why,  I'll  mak  shift  soomhow  to  dee  too  ! ' 

She  let  him  go,  and,  with  a  long  sigh,  she  lifted  her  trembling 
hands  to  her  head,  put  her  frilled  cap  straight  and  her  shawl. 
She  was  just  moving  away,  when  something  of  a  different  sort 
struck  her  sensitive  soul,  and  she  turned  again.  She  lived  for 
'Lias,  but  she  lived  for  her  religion  too,  and  it  seemed  to  her  she 
had  been  sinning  in  her  piteous  talk. 

'  Dinna  think,  Davy,'  she  said  hurriedly,  'as  I'm  complainin 
o'  th'  Lord's  judgments.  They're  aw  mercies,  if  we  did  but  know. 
An  He  tempers  th'  wind — He  sends  us  help  when  we're  droppin 
for  sorrow.  It  worn't  for  nothin  He  made  us  all  o'  a  piece. 
Theer's  good  foak  i'  th'  warld — aye,  theer  is  !  An  what's  moor, 
theer's  soom  o'  th'  best  mak  o'  foak  gooin  about  dressed  i'  th' 
worst  mak  o'  clothes.  Yo'll  find  it  out  when  yo  want  'em. ' 

And  with  a  clearing  face,  as  of  one  who  takes  up  a  burden 
again  and  adjusts  it  anew  more  easily,  she  walked  back  to  the 
house. 

David  went  down  the  lane  homewards,  whistling  hard.  But 
once,  as  he  climbed  a  stile  and  sat  dangling  his  legs  a  moment 
on  the  top,  he  felt  his  eyes  wet  again.  He  dashed  his  hand 
impatiently  across  them.  At  this  stage  of  youth  he  was  constantly 
falling  out  with  and  resenting  his  own  faculty  of  pity,  of  emotion. 
The  attitude  of  mind  had  in  it  a  sort  of  secret  half-conscious 
terror  of  what  feeling  might  do  with  him  did  he  but  give  it  head. 
He  did  not  want  to  feel — feeling  only  hurt  and  stabbed — he 
wanted  to  enjoy,  to  take  in,  to  discover — to  fling  the  wild  energies 
of  mind  and  body  into  some  action  worthy  of  them.  And  because 
he  had  no  knowledge  to  show  him  how,  and  a  wavering  will,  he 
suffered  and  deteriorated. 

The  Dawsons,  indeed,  became  his  close  friends.  In  Margaret 
there  had  sprung  up  a  motherly  affection  for  the  handsome  lonely 
lad  ;  and  he  was  grateful.  He  took  her  '  cuts '  down  to  the 
Clough  End  office  for  her  ;  when  the  snow  was  deep  on  the  Scout, 
and  Reuben  and  David  and  the  dogs  were  out  after  their  sheep 
night  and  day,  the  boy  still  found  time  to  shovel  the  snow  from 
Margaret's  roof  and  cut  a  passage  for  her  to  the  road.  The  hours 
he  spent  this  winter  by  her  kitchen  fire,  chatting  with  'Lias,  or 
eating  havercakes,  or  helping  Margaret  with  some  household 
work,  supplied  him  for  the  first  time  with  something  of  what  his 
youth  was,  in  truth,  thirsting  for — the  common  kindliness  of 
natural  affection. 


CHAP,  vi  CHILDHOOD  78 

But  certainly,  to  most  observers,  he  seemed  to  deteriorate. 
Mr.  Ancrum  could  make  nothing  of  him.  David  held  the  minister 
at  arm's-length,  and  meanwhile  rumours  reached  him  that '  Reuben 
Grieve's  nevvy'  was  beginning  to  be  much  seen  in  the  public- 
houses  ;  he  had  ceased  entirely  to  go  to  chapel  or  Sunday  school ; 
and  the  local  gossips,  starting  perhaps  from  a  natural  prejudice 
against  the  sons  of  unknown  and  probably  disreputable  mothers, 
prophesied  freely  that  the  tall,  queer-looking  lad  would  go  to  the 
bad. 

All  this  troubled  Mr.  Ancrum  sincerely.  Even  in  the  midst 
of  some  rising  troubles  of  his  own  he  found  the  energy  to  button- 
hole Reuben  again,  and  torment  him  afresh  on  the  subject  of  a 
trade  for  the  lad. 

Reuben,  flushed  and  tremulous,  went  straight  from  the  minis- 
ter to  his  wife — with  the  impetus  of  Mr.  Ancrum's  shove,  as  it 
were,  fresh  upon  him.  Sitting  opposite  to  her  in  the  back  kitchen, 
while  she  peeled  her  potatoes  with  a  fierce  competence  and  energy 
which  made  his  heart  sick  within  him,  Reuben  told  her,  with 
incoherent  repetitions  of  every  phrase,  that  in  his  opinion  the 
time  had  come  when  Mr.  Gurney  should  be  written  to,  and  some  of 
Sandy's  savings  applied  to  the  starting  of  Sandy's  son  in  the  world. 

There  was  an  ominous  silence.  Hannah's  knife  flashed,  and 
the  potato-peelings  fell  with  a  rapidity  which  fairly  paralysed 
Reuben.  In  his  nervousness,  he  let  fall  the  name  of  Mr.  Ancrum. 
Then  Hannah  broke  out.  '  Some  foo','  she  knew,  had  been  med- 
dling, and  she  might  have  guessed  that  fool  was  Mr.  Ancrum. 
Instead  of  defending  her  own  position,  she  fell  upon  Reuben  and 
his  supporter  with  a  rhetoric  whereof  the  moral  flavour  was 
positively  astounding.  Standing  with  the  potato-bowl  on  one 
hip  and  a  hand  holding  the  knife  on  the  other,  she  delivered  her 
views  as  to  David's  laziness,  temper,  and  general  good-for-no- 
thingness.  If  Reuben  chose  to  incur  the  risks  of  throwing  such  a 
young  lout  into  town-wickedness,  with  no  one  to  look  after  him, 
let  him  ;  she'd  be  glad  enough  to  be  shut  on  him.  But,  as  to 
writing  to  Mr.  Gurney  and  that  sort  of  talk,  she  wasn't  going  to 
bandy  words — not  she ;  but  nobody  had  ever  meddled  with 
Hannah  Grieve's  affairs  yet  and  found  they  had  done  well  for 
themselves. 

'  An  I  wouldna  advise  yo,  Reuben  Grieve,  to  begin  now — no, 
I  wouldna.  I  gie  yo  fair  noatice.  Soa  theer's  not  enough  for  t' 
lad  to  do,  Mr.  Ancrum,  he  thinks  ?  Perhaps  he'll  tak  th'  place 
an  try  ?  I'd  not  gie  him  as  mich  wage  as  ud  fill  his  stomach  i' 
th'  week — noa,  I'd  not,  not  if  yo  wor  to  ask  me — a  bletherin 
windy  chap  as  iver  I  saw.  I'd  as  soon  hear  a  bird-clapper  preach 
as  him — theer'd  be  more  sense  an  less  noise  !  An  they're  findin 
it  out  down  theer — we'st  see  th'  back  on  him  soon.' 

And  to  Reuben,  looking  across  the  little  scullery  at  his  wife, 
at  the  harsh  face  shaken  with  the  rage  which  these  new  and 
intolerable  attempts  of  her  husband  to  dislodge  the  yoke  of  years 
excited  in  her,  it  was  as  though  like  Christian  and  Hopeful  he 


74  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

were  trying  to  get  back  into  the  "Way,  and  found  that  the  floods 
had  risen  over  it. 

When  he  was  out  of  her  sight,  he  fell  into  a  boundless  per- 
plexity. Perhaps  she  was  right,  after  all.  Mr.  Ancrum  was  a 
meddler  and  he  an  ass.  When  next  he  saw  David,  he  spoke  to 
the  boy  harshly,  and  demanded  to  know  where  he  went  loafing 
every  afternoon.  Then,  as  the  days  went  on,  he  discovered  that 
Hannah  meant  to  visit  his  insubordination  upon  him  in  various 
unpleasant  ways.  There  were  certain  little  creature  comforts, 
making  but  small  show  on  the  surface  of  a  life  of  general  absti- 
nence and  frugality,  but  which,  in  the  course  of  years,  had  grown 
very  important  to  Reuben,  and  which  Hannah  had  never  denied 
him.  They  were  now  withdrawn.  In  her  present  state  of  temper 
with  her  better  half,  Hannah  could  not  be  'fashed'  with  pro- 
viding them.  And  no  one  could  force  her  to  brew  him  his  toddy 
at  night,  or  put  his  slippers  to  warm,  or  keep  his  meals  hot  and 
tasty  for  him,  if  some  emergency  among  the  animals  made  him 
late  for  his  usual  hours — certainly  not  the  weak  and  stammering 
Reuben.  He  was  at  her  mercy,  and  he  chafed  indescribably 
under  her  unaccustomed  neglect. 

As  for  Mr.  Ancrum,  his  own  affairs,  poor  soul,  soon  became 
so  absorbing  that  he  had  no  thoughts  left  for  David.  There  were 
dissensions  growing  between  him  and  the  'Christian  Brethren.' 
He  spoke  often  at  the  Sunday  meetings — too  often,  by  a  great 
deal,  for  the  other  shining  lights  of  the  congregation.  But  his 
much  speaking  seemed  to  come  rather  of  restlessness  than  of  a 
full  'experience,'  so  torn,  subtle,  and  difficult  were  the  things  he 
said.  Grave  doubts  of  his  doctrine  were  rising  among  some  of 
the  'Brethren';  a  mean  intrigue  against  him  was  just  starting 
among  others,  and  he  himself  was  tempest-tossed,  not  knowing 
from  week  to  week  whether  to  go  or  stay. 

Meanwhile,  as  the  winter  went  on,  he  soon  perceived  that 
Reuben  Grieve's  formidable  wife  was  added  to  the  ranks  of  his 
enemies.  She  came  to  chapel,  because  for  a  Christian  Brother  or 
Sister  to  go  anywhere  else  would  have  been  a  confession  of  weak- 
ness in  the  face  of  other  critical  and  observant  communities — such, 
for  instance,  as  the  Calvinistic  Methodists,  or  the  Particular  Bap- 
tists— not  to  be  thought  of  for  a  moment.  But  when  he  passed 
her,  he  got  no  greeting  from  her  ;  she  drew  her  skirts  aside,  and 
her  stony  eye  looked  beyond  him,  as  though  there  were  nothing 
on  the  road.  And  the  sharp-tongued  things  she  said  of  him  came 
round  to  him  one  by  one.  Reuben,  too,  avoided  the  minister, 
who,  a  year  or  two  before,  had  brought  fountains  of  refreshing 
to  his  soul,  and  in  the  business  of  the  chapel,  of  which  he  was 
still  an  elder,  showed  himself  more  inarticulate  and  confused 
than  ever.  While  David,  who  had  won  a  corner  in  Mr.  Ancrum's 
heart  since  the  days  of  their  first  acquaintance  at  Sunday-school 
— David  fled  him  altogether,  and  would  have  none  of  his  counsel 
or  his  friendship.  The  alienation  of  the  Grieves  made  another 
and  a  bitter  drop  in  the  minister's  rising  cup  of  failure. 


CHAP,  vii  CHILDHOOD  75 

So  the  little  web  of  motives  and  cross-motives,  for  the  most 
part  of  the  commonest  earthiest  hue,  yet  shot  every  here  and 
there  by  a  thread  or  two  of  heavenlier  stuff,  went  spinning  itself 
the  winter  through  round  the  unknowing  children.  The  reports 
which  had  reached  Mr.  Ancrum  were  true  enough.  David  was, 
in  his  measure,  endeavouring  to  'see  life.'  On  a  good  many 
winter  evenings  the  lad,  now  nearly  fifteen,  and  shooting  up  fast 
to  man's  stature,  might  have  been  seen  among  the  topers  at  the 
'  Crooked  Cow,'  nay,  even  lending  an  excited  ear  to  the  Secularist 
speakers,  who  did  their  best  to  keep  things  lively  at  a  certain  low 
public  kept  by  one  Jerry  Timmins,  a  Radical  wag,  who  had  often 
measured  himself  both  in  the  meeting-houses  and  in  the  streets 
against  the  local  preachers,  and,  according  to  his  own  following, 
with  no  small  success.  There  was  a  covered  skittle-ground 
attached  to  this  house  in  which,  to  the  horrid  scandal  of  church 
and  chapel,  Sunday  dances  were  sometimes  held.  A  certain 
fastidious  pride,  and  no  doubt  a  certain  conscience  towards 
Reuben,  kept  David  from  experimenting  in  these  performances, 
which  were  made  as  demonstratively  offensive  to  the  pious  as  they 
well  could  be  without  attracting  the  attention  of  the  police. 

But  at  the  disputations  between  Timmins  and  a  succession  of 
religious  enthusiasts,  ministers  and  others,  which  took  place  on 
the  same  spot  during  the  winter  and  spring,  David  was  frequently 
present. 

Neither  here,  however,  nor  at  the  '  Crooked  Cow '  did  the 
company  feel  the  moody  growing  youth  to  be  one  of  themselves. 
He  would  sit  with  his  pint  before  him,  silent,  his  great  black  eyes 
roving  round  the  persons  present.  His  tongue  was  sharp  on 
occasion,  and  his  fists  ready,  so  that  after  various  attempts  to 
make  a  butt  of  him  he  was  generally  let  alone.  He  got  what  he 
wanted — he  learnt  to  know  what  smoking  and  drinking  might  be 
like,  and  the  jokes  of  the  taproom.  And  all  by  the  help  of  a  few 
shillings  dealt  out  to  him  this  winter  for  the  first  time  by  Reuben, 
who  gave  them  to  him  with  a  queer  deprecating  look  and  an 
injunction  to  keep  the  matter  secret  from  Hannah.  As  to  the  use 
the  lad  made  of  them,  Reuben  was  as  ignorant  as  he  was  of  all 
other  practical  affairs  outside  his  own  few  acres. 


CHAPTER  VII 

SPRING  came  round  again  and  the  warm  days  of  June.  At  Eastei 
time  David  had  made  no  further  attempts  to  meet  with  Jenny 
Crum  on  her  midnight  wanderings.  The  whole  tendency  of  his 
winter's  mental  growth,  as  well  perhaps  of  the  matters  brutally 
raised  and  crudely  sifted  in  Jerry  Timmins's  parlour,  had  been 
towards  a  harder  and  more  sceptical  habit  of  mind.  For  the 
moment  the  supernatural  had  no  thrill  in  it  for  an  intelligence 
full  of  contradictions.  So  the  poor  witch,  if  indeed  she  '  walked,' 
revisited  her  place  of  pain  unobserved  of  mortal  eye. 


76  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

About  the  middle  of  June  David  and  his  uncle  went,  as  usual, 
to  Kettlewell  and  Masholme,  in  Yorkshire,  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  home  from  thence  some  of  that  hardier  breed  of  sheep 
which  was  required  for  the  moorland,  a  Scotch  breed  brought 
down  yearly  to  the  Yorkshire  markets  by  the  Lowland  farmers 
beyond  the  border.  This  expedition  was  an  annual  matter,  and 
most  of  the  farmers  in  the  Kinder  Valley  and  thereabouts  joined 
in  it.  They  went  together  by  train  to  Masholme,  made  their 
purchases,  and  then  drove  their  sheep  over  the  moors  home,  filling 
the  wide  ferny  stretches  and  the  rough  upland  road  with  a  patri- 
archal wealth  of  flocks,  and  putting  up  at  night  at  the  village  inns, 
while  their  charges  strayed  at  will  over  the  hills.  These  yearly 
journeys  had  always  been  in  former  years  a  joy  to  David.  The 
wild  freedom  of  the  walk,  the  change  of  scene  which  every  mile  and 
every  village  brought  with  it,  the  resistance  of  the  moorland  wind, 
the  spring  of  the  moorland  turf,  every  little  incident  of  the  road, 
whether  of  hardship  or  of  rough  excess,  added  fuel  to  the  flame  of 
youth,  and  went  to  build  up  the  growing  creature. 

This  year,  however,  that  troubling  of  the  waters  which  was 
going  on  in  the  boy  was  especially  active  during  the  Masholme 
expedition.  He  kept  to  himself  and  his  animals,  and  showed  such 
a  gruff  unneighbourly  aspect  to  the  rest  of  the  world  that  the 
other  drivers  first  teased  and  then  persecuted  him.  He  fought 
one  or  two  pitched  battles  on  the  way  home,  showed  himself  a 
more  respectable  antagonist,  on  the  whole,  than  his  assailants  had 
bargained  for,  and  was  thenceforward  contemptuously  sent  to 
Coventry.  '  Yoong  man,'  said  an  old  farmer  to  him  once  reprov- 
ingly, after  one  of  these  'rumpuses,'  lyor  temper  woan't  mouldy 
wi  keepin.'  Keuben  coming  by  at  the  moment  threw  an  unhappy 
glance  at  the  lad,  whose  bruised  face  and  torn  clothes  showed  he 
had  been  fighting.  To  the  uncle's  mind  there  was  a  wanton,  nay, 
a  ruffianly  look  about  him,  which  was  wholly  new.  Instead  of 
rebuking  the  culprit,  Eeuben  slouched  away  and  put  as  much 
road  as  possible  between  himself  and  Davy. 

One  evening,  after  a  long  day  on  the  moors,  the  party  came, 
late  in  the  afternoon,  to  the  Yorkshire  village  of  Haworth.  To 
David  it  was  a  village  like  any  other.  He  was  already  mortally 
tired  of  the  whole  business — of  the  endless  hills,  the  company, 
the  bleak  grey  weather.  While  the  rest  of  the  party  were  mop- 
ping brows  and  draining  ale-pots  in  the  farmers'  public,  he  was 
employing  himself  in  aimlessly  kicking  a  stone  about  one  of  the 
streets,  when  he  was  accosted  by  a  woman  of  the  shopkeeping 
class,  a  decent  elderly  woman,  who  had  come  out  for  a  mouthful 
of  air,  with  a  child  dragging  after  her. 

'  Yoong  mester,  yo've  coom  fro  a  distance,  hannot  yo  ? ' 

The  woman's  tone  struck  the  boy  pleasantly  as  though  it  had 
been  a  phrase  of  cheerful  music,  there  was  a  motherliness  in  it 
— a  something,  for  which,  perhaps  all  unknown  to  himself,  his 
secret  heart  was  thirsting. 

'Fro  Masholme,'   he  said,  looking  at  her  full,  so  that  she 


CHAP,  vii  CHILDHOOD  77 

could  see  all  the  dark,  richly  coloured  face  she  had  had  a  curi- 
osity to  see  ;  then  he  added  abruptly,  '  We're  bound  Kinder  way 
wi  t'  sheep — reet  t'other  side  o'  t'  Scout.' 

The  woman  nodded.  'Aye,  I  know  a  good  mony  o'  your 
Kinder  foak.  They've  coom  by  here  a  mony  year  passt.  But  I 
doan't  know  as  I've  seen  yo  afoor.  Yo're  nobbut  a  yoong  'un. 
Eh,  but  we  get  sich  a  sight  of  strangers  here  now,  the  yan  fairly 
drives  the  tother  out  of  a  body's  mind. ' 

1  Doos  foak  coom  for  t'  summer  ? '  asked  David,  lifting  his  eye- 
brows a  little,  and  looking  round  on  the  bleak  and  straggling 
village.  . 

'  Noa,  they  coom  to  see  the  church.  Lor'  bless  ye  ! '  said  the 
good  woman,  following  his  eyes  towards  the  edifice  and  breaking 
into  a  laugh,  '  'taint  becos  the  church  is  onything  much  to  look 
at.  'Taint  nowt  out  o'  t'  common  that  I  knows  on.  Noa — but 
they  coom  along  o' t'  monument,  an'  Miss  Bronte — Mrs.  Nicholls, 
as  should  be,  poor  thing — rayder. ' 

There  was  no  light  of  understanding  in  David's  face,  but  his 
penetrating  eyes,  the  size  and  beauty  of  which  she  could  not  help 
observing,  seemed  to  invite  her  to  go  on. 

'  You  niver  heerd  on  our  Miss  Bronte  ? '  said  the  woman, 
mildly.  '  Well,  I  spose  not.  She  was  just  a  bit  quiet  body. 
Nobbody  hereabouts  saw  mich  in  her.  But  she  wrote  bukes — 
tales,  yo  know — tales  about  t'  foak  roun  here  ;  an  they  do  say, 
them  as  has  read  'em,  'at  they're  terr'ble  good.  Mr.  Watson,  at 
t'  Post  Office,  he's  read  'em,  and  he's  allus  promised  to  lend  'em 
me.  But  soomhow  I  doan't  get  th'  time.  An  in  gineral  I've  naw 
moor  use  for  a  book  nor  a  coo  has  for  clogs.  But  she's  terr'ble 
famous,  is  Miss  Bronte,  now — an  her  sisters  too,  pore  young 
women.  Yo  should  see  t'  visitors'  book  in  th'  church.  Aw  t' 
grand  foak  as  iver  wor.  They  cooms  fro  Lunnon  a  purpose, 
soom  ov  'em,  an  they  just  takes  a  look  roun  t'  place,  an  writes 
their  names,  an  goos  away.  Would  yo  like  to  see  th'  church  ? ' 
said  the  good-natured  creature — looking  at  the  tall  lad  beside  her 
with  an  admiring  scrutiny  such  as  every  woman  knows  she  may 
apply  to  any  male.  '  I'm  goin  that  way,  an  it's  my  brother  'at 
has  th'  keys.' 

David  accompanied  her  with  an  alacrity  which  would  have 
astonished  his  usual  travelling  companions,  and  they  mounted 
the  straggling  village  street  together  towards  the  church.  As 
they  neared  it  the  woman  stopped  and,  shading  her  eyes  against 
the  sunlight,  pointed  up  to  it  and  the  parsonage. 

'  Noa,  it's  not  a  beauty,  isn't  our  church.  They  do  say  our 
parson  ud  like  to  have  it  pulled  clean  down  an  a  new  one  built. 
Onyways,  they're  goin  to  clear  th'  Brontes'  pew  away,  an  sich  a 
rumpus  as  soom  o'  t'  Bradford  papers  have  bin  makin,  and  a 
gradely  few  o'  t'  people  here  too  !  I  doan't  know  t'  reets  on  't 
missel,  but  I'st  be  sorry  when  yo  conno  see  ony  moor  where  Miss 
Charlotte  an  Miss  Emily  used  to  sit  o'  Sundays — An  theer's  th' 
owd  house.  Yo  used  to  be  'lowed  to  see  Miss  Charlotte's  room, 


78  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

where  she  did  her  writin,  but  they  tell  me  yo  can't  be  let  in  now. 
Seems  strange,  doan't  it,  'at  onybody  should  be  real  fond  o'  that 
place  ?  When  yo  go  by  it  i'  winter,  soomtimes,  it  lukes  that  lone- 
some, with  t'  churchyard  coomin  up  close  roun  it,  it's  enoof  to 
gie  a  body  th'  shivers.  But  I  do  bleeve,  Miss  Charlotte  she  could 
ha  kissed  ivery  stone  in  't ;  an  they  do  say,  when  she  came  back 
fro  furrin  parts,  she  'd  sit  an  cry  for  joy,  she  wor  that  partial  to 
Haworth.  It's  a  place  yo  do  get  to  favour  soomhow,'  said  the 
good  woman,  apologetically,  as  though  feeling  that  no  stranger 
could  justly  be  expected  to  sympathise  with  the  excesses  of  local 
patriotism.  • 

'  Did  th'  oother  sisters  write  books  ? '  demanded  David,  his 
eyes  wandering  over  the  bare  stone  house  towards  which  the  pas- 
sionate heart  of  Charlotte  Bronte  had  yearned  so  often  from  the 
land  of  exile. 

'  Bless  yo,  yes.  An  theer's  mony  foak  'at  think  Miss  Emily 
wor  a  deol  cliverer  even  nor  Miss  Charlotte.  Not  but  what  yo 
get  a  bad  noshun  o'  Yorkshire  folk  fro  Miss  Emily's  bukes — soa 
I'm  towd.  Bit  there's  rough  doins  on  t'  moors  soomtimes,  I'll 
uphowd  yo !  An  Miss  Emily  had  eyes  like  gimlets — they  seed 
reet  through  a  body.  Deary  me,'  she  cried,  the  fountain  of 
gossip  opening  more  and  more,  '  to  think  I  should  ha  known  'em 
in  pinafores,  Mr.  Patrick  an  aw  ! ' 

And  under  the  stress  of  what  was  really  a  wonder  at  the 
small  beginnings  of  fame — a  wonder  which  much  repetition  of 
her  story  had  only  developed  in  her — she  poured  out  upon  her 
companion  the  history  of  the  Brontes  ;  of  that  awful  winter  in 
which  three  of  that  weird  band — Emily,  Patrick,  Anne — fell 
away  from  Charlotte's  side,  met  the  death  which  belonged  to 
each,  and  left  Charlotte  alone  to  reap  the  harvest  of  their  com- 
mon life  through  a  few  burning  years  ;  of  the  publication  of  the 
books  ;  how  the  men  of  the  Mechanics'  Institute  (the  roof  of 
which  she  pointed  out  to  him)  went  crazy  over  '  Shirley ' ;  hov/ 
everybody  about  '  thowt  Miss  Bronte  had  bin  puttin  ov  'em  into 
prent,'  and  didn't  know  whether  to  be  pleased  or  piqued  ;  how, 
as  the  noise  made  by  '  Jane  Eyre  '  and  '  Shirley '  grew,  a  wave  of 
excitement  passed  through  the  whole  countryside,  and  people 
came  from  Halifax,  and  Bradford,  and  Huddersfield — '  aye,  an 
Lunnon  soomtoimes  ' — to  Haworth  church  on  a  Sunday,  to  see  the 
quiet  body  at  her  prayers  who  had  made  all  the  stir ;  how  Mr. 
Nicholls,  the  curate,  bided  his  time  and  pressed  his  wooing  ;  how 
he  won  her  as  Rachel  was  won  ;  and  how  love  did  but  open  the 
gate  of  death,  and  the  fiery  little  creature — exhausted  by  such  an 
energy  of  living  as  had  possessed  her  from  her  cradle — sank  and 
died  on  the  threshold  of  her  new  life.  All  this  Charlotte  Bronte's 
townswoman  told  simply  and  garrulously,  but  she  told  it  well 
because  she  had  felt  and  seen. 

'  She  wor  so  sma'  and  nesh  ;  nowt  but  a  midge.  Theer  was  no 
lasst  in  her.  Aye,  when  I  heerd  the  bell  tolling  for  Miss  Charlotte 
that  Saturday  mornin,'  said  the  speaker,  shaking  her  head  as  she 


CHAP,  vii  CHILDHOOD  7» 

moved  away  towards  the  church,  '  I  cud  ha  sat  down  an  cried 
my  eyes  out.  But  if  she'd  ha  seen  me  she'd  ha  nobbut  said, 
"  Martha,  get  your  house  straight,  an  doan't  fret  for  me  ! "  She 
had  sicb  a  sperrit,  had  Miss  Charlotte.  Well,  now,. after  aw,  I 
needn't  go  for  t'  keys,  for  th'  church  door's  open.  It's  Bradford 
early  closin  day,  yo  see,  an  I  dessay  soom  Bradford  foak's  goin 
over.' 

So  she  marched  him  in,  and  there  indeed  was  a  crowd  in  the 
little  ugly  church,  congregated  especially  at  the  east  end,  where 
the  Brontes'  pew  still  stood  awaiting  demolition  at  the  hands  of  a 
reforming  vicar.  As  David  and  his  guide  came  up  they  found  a 
young  weaver  in  a  black  coat,  with  a  sallow  oblong  face,  black 
hair,  high  collars,  and  a  general  look  of  Lord  Byron,  haranguing 
those  about  him  on  the  iniquity  of  removing  the  pews,  in  a 
passionate  undertone,  which  occasionally  rose  high  above  the  key 
prescribed  by  decorum.  It  was  a  half-baked  eloquence,  sadly 
liable  to  bathos,  divided,  indeed,  between  sentences  ringing  with 
the  great  words  'genius'  and  'fame,'  and  others  devoted  to  an 
indignant  contemplation  of  the  hassocks  in  the  old  pews,  'the 
touching  and  well-worn  implements  of  prayer,'  to  quote  his 
handsome  description  of  them,  which  a  meddlesome  parson  was 
about  to  'hurl  away,'  out  of  mere  hatred  for  intellect  and  con- 
tempt of  the  popular  voice. 

But,  half-baked  or  no,  David  rose  to  it  greedily.  After  a  few 
moments'  listening,  he  pressed  up  closer  to  the  speaker,  his  broad 
shoulders  already  making  themselves  felt  in  a  crowd,  his  eyes 
beginning  to  glow  with  the  dissenter's  hatred  of  parsons.  In  the 
full  tide  of  discourse,  however,  the  orator  was  arrested  by  an 
indignant  sexton,  who,  coming  quickly  up  the  church,  laid  hold 
upon  him. 

'  No  speechmakin  in  the  church,  if  you  please,  sir.  Move  on 
if  yo're  goin  to  th'  vestry,  sir,  for  I'll  have  to  shut  up  directly.' 

The  young  man  stared  haughtily  at  his  assailant,  and  the  men 
and  boys  near  closed  up,  expecting  a  row.  But  the  voice  of 
authority  within  its  own  gates  is  strong,  and  the  champion  of 
outraged  genius  collapsed.  The  whole  flock  broke  up  and  meekly 
followed  the  sexton,  who  strode  on  before  them  to  the  vestry. 

'William's  a  rare  way  wi  un,'  said  his  companion  to  David, 
following  her  brother's  triumph  with  looks  of  admiration.  '  I 
thowt  that  un  wud  ha  bin  harder  to  shift.' 

David,  however,  turned  upon  her  with  a  frown.  '  'Tis  a 
black  shame,'  he  said  ;  '  why  conno  they  let  t'  owd  pew  bide  ? ' 

'  Ah,  weel,'  said  the  woman  with  a  sigh,  '  as  I  said  afore,  I'st 
be  reet  sorry  when  Miss  Charlotte's  seat's  gone.  But  yo  conno 
ha  brawlin  i'  church.  William's  reet  enough  there.' 

And  beginning  to  be  alarmed  lest  she  should  be  raising  up 
fresh  trouble  for  William  in  the  person  of  this  strange,  foreign- 
looking  lad,  with  his  eyes  like  '  live  birds, '  she  hurried  him  on  to 
the  vestry,  where  the  visitors'  books  were  being  displayed.  Here 
the  Byronic  young  man  was  attempting  to  pick  a  fresh  quarrel 


80  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

with  the  sexton,  by  way  of  recovering  himself  with  his  party. 
But  he  took  little  by  it ;  the  sexton  was  a  tough  customer.  When 
the  local  press  was  shaken  in  his  face,  the  vicar's  hireling,  a 
canny,  weather-beaten  Yorkshireman,  merely  replied  with  a  twist 
of  the  mouth, 

'  Aye,  aye,  th'  newspapers  talk — there'd  be  soombody  goin 
hoongry  if  they  didn't ; '  or — '  Them  'at  has  to  eat  th'  egg  knaws 
best  whether  it  is  addled  or  no — to  my  thinkin,'  and  so  on 
through  a  string  of  similar  aphorisms  which  finally  demolished 
his  antagonist. 

David  meanwhile  was  burning  to  be  in  the  fray.  He  thought 
of  some  fine  Miltonic  sayings  to  hurl  at  the  sexton,  but  for  the 
life  of  him  he  could  not  get  them  out.  In  the  presence  of  that 
indifferent,  sharp-faced  crowd  of  townspeople  his  throat  grew  hot 
and  dry  whenever  he  thought  of  speaking. 

While  the  Bradford  party  struggled  out  of  the  church,  David, 
having  somehow  got  parted  from  the  woman  who  had  brought 
him  in,  lingered  behind,  before  that  plain  tablet  on  the  wall, 
whereat  the  crowd  which  had  just  gone  out  had  been  worshipping. 

EMILY,  aged  29. 

ANNE,  aged  27. 

CHAKLOTTE,  in  the  39th  year  of  her  age. 

The  church  had  grown  suddenly  quite  still.  The  sexton  was 
outside,  engaged  in  turning  back  a  group  of  Americans,  on  the 
plea  that  visiting  hours  were  over  for  the  day.  Through  the  wide- 
open  door  the  fading  yellow  light  streamed  in,  and  with  it  a  cool 
wind  which  chased  little  eddies  of  dust  about  the  pavement.  In 
the  dusk  the  three  names — black  on  the  white — stood  out  with  a 
stern  and  yet  piteous  distinctness.  The  boy  stood  there  feeling 
the  silence — the  tomb  near  by — the  wonder  and  pathos  of  fame, 
and  all  that  thrill  of  undefined  emotion  to  which  youth  yields 
itself  so  hungrily. 

The  sexton  startled  him  by  tapping  him  on  the  shoulder. 
'Time  to  go  home,  yoong  man.  My  sister  she  told  me  to  say 
good  neet  to  yer,  and  she  wishes  yo  good  luck  wi  your  journey. 
Where  are  yo  puttin  up  ? ' 

'At  the  "Brown  Bess,"'  murmured  the  boy  ungraciously, 
and  hurried  out.  But  the  good  man,  unconscious  of  repulse  and 
kindly  disposed  towards  his  sister's  waif,  stuck  to  him,  and,  as 
they  walked  down  the  churchyard  together,  the  difference  between 
the  manners  of  official  and  those  of  private  life  proved  to  be  so 
melting  to  the  temper  that  even  David's  began  to  yield.  And  a 
little  incident  of  the  walk  mollified  him  completely.  As  they 
turned  a  corner  they  came  upon  a  bit  of  waste  land,  and  there  in 
the  centre  of  an  admiring  company  was  the  sexton's  enemy, 
mounted  on  a  bit  of  wall,  and  dealing  out  their  deserts  in  fine 
style  to  those  meddling  parsons  and  their  underlings  who  despised 
genius  and  took  no  heed  of  the  relics  of  the  mighty  dead. 


CHAP,  vii  CHILDHOOD  81 

The  sexton  stopped  to  listen  when  they  were  nearly  out  of 
range,  and  was  fairly  carried  away  by  the  '  go '  of  the  orator. 

'  Doan't  he  do  it  nateral ! '  he  said  with  enthusiasm  to  David, 
after  a  passage  specially  and  unflatteringly  devoted  to  himself. 
'  Lor'  bless  yo,  it  don't  hurt  me.  But  I  do  loike  a  bit  o'  good 
speakin,  'at  I  do.  If  fine  worrds  wor  penny  loaves,  that  yoong 
gen'leman  ud  get  a  livin  aisy  !  An  as  for  th'  owd  pew,  I  cud  go 
skrikin  about  th'  streets  mysel,  if  it  ud  do  a  ha'porth  o'  good. ' 

David's  brow  cleared,  and,  by  the  time  they  had  gone  a 
hundred  yards  further,  instead  of  fighting  the  good  man,  he 
asked  a  favour  of  him. 

'  D'  yo  think  as  theer's  onybody  in  Haworth  as  would  lend  me 
a  seet  o'  yan  o'  Miss  Bronte's  tales  for  an  hour  ? '  he  said,  redden- 
ing furiously,  as  they  stopped  at  the  sexton's  gate. 

'  Why  to  be  sure,  mon,'  said  the  sexton  cheerily,  pleased  with 
the  little  opening  for  intelligent  patronage.  '  Coom  your  ways  in, 
and  we'll  see  if  we  can't  oblige  yo.  I've  got  a  tidy  lot  o'  books  in 
my  parlour,  an  I  can  give  yo  "  Shirley,"  I  know.' 

David  went  into  the  stone-built  cottage  with  his  guide,  and 
was  shown  in  the  little  musty  front  room  a  bookcase  full  of 
books  which  made  his  eyes  gleam  with  desire.  The  half -curbed 
joy  and  eagerness  he  showed  so  touched  the  sexton  that,  after 
inquiring  as  to  the  lad's  belongings,  and  remembering  that  in  his 
time  he  had  enjoyed  many  a  pipe  and  '  glass  o'  yell '  with  '  owd 
Reuben  Grieve'  at  the  'Brown  Bess,'  the  worthy  man  actually 
lent  him  indefinitely  three  precious  volumes — 'Shirley,'  'Ben- 
jamin Franklin's  Autobiography,'  and  '  Nicholas  Nickleby.' 

David  ran  off  hugging  them,  and  thenceforward  he  bore 
patiently  enough  with  the  days  of  driving  and  tramping  which 
remained,  for  the  sake  of  the  long  evenings  when  in  some  lonely 
corner  of  moor  and  wood  he  lay  full  length  on  the  grass  revelling 
in  one  or  other  of  his  new  possessions.  He  had  a  voracious  way  of 
tearing  out  the  heart  of  a  book  first  of  all,  and  then  beginning  it 
again  with  a  different  and  a  tamer  curiosity,  lingering,  tasting, 
and  digesting.  By  the  time  he  and  Keuben  reached  home  he  had 
rushed  through  all  three  books,  and  his  mind  was  full  of  them. 

'  Shirley '  and  '  Nicholas  Nickleby '  were  the  first  novels  of 
modern  life  he  had  ever  laid  hands  on,  and  before  he  had  finished 
them  he  felt  them  in  his  veins  like  new  wine.  The  real  world  had 
been  to  him  for  months  something  sickeningly  narrow  and  empty, 
from  which  at  times  he  had  escaped  with  passion  into  a  distant 
dream-life  of  poetry  and  history.  Now  the  walls  of  this  real  world 
were  suddenly  pushed  back  as  it  were  on  all  sides,  and  there  was 
an  inrush  of  crowd,  excitement,  and  delight.  Human  beings  like 
those  he  heard  of  or  talked  with  every  day — factory  hands  and  mill- 
owners,  parsons,  squires,  lads  and  lasses— the  Yorkes,  and  Robert 
Moore,  Squeers,  Smike,  Kate  Nickleby  and  Newman  Noggs, 
came  by,  looked  him  in  the  eyes,  made  him  take  sides,  compare 
himself  with  them,  join  in  their  fights  and  hatreds,  pity  and  exult 
with  them.  Here  was  something  more  disturbing,  personal,  and 


82  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

stimulating  than  that  mere  imaginative  relief  he  had  been  getting 
out  of  '  Paradise  Lost,'  or  the  scenes  of  the  '  Jewish  Wars ' ! 

By  a  natural  transition  the  mental  tumult  thus  roused  led  to  a 
more  intense  self -consciousness  than  any  he  had  yet  known.  In 
measuring  himself  with  the  world  of  '  Shirley '  or  of  Dickens,  he 
began  to  realise  the  problem  of  his  own  life  with  a  singular  keen- 
ness and  clearness.  Then — last  of  all — the  record  of  Franklin's 
life, — of  the  steady  rise  of  the  ill-treated  printer's  devil  to  know- 
ledge and  power — filled  him  with  an  urging  and  concentrating 
ambition,  and  set  his  thoughts,  endowed  with  a  new  heat  and 
nimbleness,  to  the  practical  unravelling  of  a  practical  case. 

They  reached  home  again  early  on  a  May  day.  As  he  and 
Reuben,  driving  their  new  sheep,  mounted  the  last  edge  of  the 
moor  which  separated  them  from  home,  the  Kinder  Valley  lay 
before  them,  sparkling  in  a  double  radiance  of  morning  and  of 
spring.  David  lingered  a  minute  or  two  behind  his  uncle. 
What  a  glory  of  light  and  freshness  in  the  air — what  soaring  larks 
— what  dipping  swallows  !  And  the  scents  from  the  dew-steeped 
heather — and  the  murmur  of  the  blue  and  glancing  stream  i 

The  boy's  heart  went  out  to  the  valley — and  in  the  Fame 
instant  he  put  it  from  him.  An  indescribable  energy  and 
exultation  took  possession  of  him.  The  tide  of  will  for  which  he 
had  been  waiting  all  these  months  had  risen  ;  and  for  the  first 
time  he  felt  swelling  within  him  the  power  to  break  with  habit,  to 
cut  his  way. 

But  what  first  step  to  take  ?  Whom  to  consult  ?  Suddenly  he 
remembered  Mr.  Ancrum,  first  with  shame,  then  with  hope.  Had 
he  thrown  away  his  friend?  Rumour  said  that  things  were 
getting  worse  and  worse  at  chapel,  and  that  Mr.  Ancrum  was 
going  to  Manchester  at  once. 

He  ran  down  the  slopes  of  heather  towards  home  as  though  he 
would  catch  and  question  Mr.  Ancrum  there  and  then.  And 
Louie  ?  Patience  !  He  would  settle  everything.  Meanwhile,  he 
was  regretfully  persuaded  that  if  you  had  asked  Miss  Bronte 
what  could  be  done  with  a  creature  like  Louie  she  would  have 
had  a  notion  or  two. 


CHAPTER  VTII 

*  REACH  me  that  book,  Louie,'  said  David  peremptorily;  '  it  ull  be 
worse  for  yo  if  yo  don't. ' 

The  brother  and  sister  were  in  the  smithy.  Louie  was 
squatting  on  the  ground  with  her  hands  behind  her,  her  lips 
sharply  shut  as  though  nothing  should  drag  a  word  out  of  them, 
and  her  eyes  blazing  defiance  at  David,  who  had  her  by  the 
shoulder,  and  looked  to  the  full  as  fierce  as  she  looked  provoking. 

'  Find  it ! '  was  all  she  said.  He  had  been  absent  for  a  few 
minutes  after  a  sheep  that  had  got  into  difficulties  in  the  Red 


CHAP.  Tin  CHILDHOOD  83 

Brook,  and  when  he  returned,  his  volume  of  Bollin's  '  Ancient 
History ' — 'Lias's  latest  loan — which  he  had  imprudently  forgotten 
to  take  with  him,  had  disappeared. 

David  gave  her  an  angry  shake,  on  which  she  toppled  over 
among  the  fallen  stones  with  an  exasperating  limpness,  and  lay 
there  laughing. 

'  Oh,  very  well,'  said  David,  suddenly  recovering  himself;  'yo 
keep  yor  secret.  I'st  keep  mine,  that's  aw. ' 

Louie  lay  quiet  a  minute  or  two,  laughing  artificially  at  inter- 
vals, while  David  searched  the  corners  of  the  smithy,  turning 
every  now  and  then  to  give  a  stealthy  look  at  his  sister. 

The  bait  took.  Louie  stopped  laughing,  sat  up,  put  herself 
straight,  and  looked  about  her. 

'  Yo  hain't  got  a  secret,'  she  said  coolly;  'I'm  not  to  be  took 
in  wi  snuff  that  way.' 

'  Very  well,'  said  David  indifferently,  '  then  I  haven't.' 

And  sitting  down  near  the  pan,  he  took  out  one  of  the  little 
boats  from  the  hole  near,  and  began  to  trim  its  keel  here  and 
there  with  his  knife.  The  occupation  seemed  to  be  absorbing. 

Louie  sat  for  a  while,  sucking  at  a  lump  of  sugar  she  had 
swept  that  morning  into  the  omnium  gatherum  of  her  pocket. 
At  last  she  took  up  a  little  stone  and  threw  it  across  at  David. 

'  What's  yor  silly  old  secret  about,  then  ? ' 

'  Where's  my  book,  then  ? '  replied  David,  holding  up  the  boat 
and  looking  with  one  eye  shut  along  the  keel. 

'  Iv  I  gie  it  yer,  an  yor  secret  ain't  wo'th  it,  I'll  put  soom  o' 
that  watter  down  yor  neckhole,'  said  Louie,  nodding  towards  the 
place. 

'  If  yo  don't  happen  to  find  yorsel  in  th'  pan  fust, '  remarked 
David  unmoved. 

Louie  sucked  at  her  sugar  a  little  longer,  with  her  hands  round 
her  knees.  She  had  thrown  off  her  hat,  and  the  May  sun  struck 
full  on  her  hair,  on  the  glossy  brilliance  of  it,  and  the  natural 
curls  round  the  temples  which  disguised  a  high  and  narrow  brow. 
She  no  longer  wore  her  hair  loose.  In  passionate  emulation  of 
Annie  Wigson,  she  had  it  plaited  behind,  and  had  begged  an  end 
of  blue  ribbon  of  Mrs.  Wigson  to  tie  it  with,  so  that  the  beautiful 
arch  of  the  head  showed  more  plainly  than  before,  while  the  black 
eyes  and  brows  seemed  to  have  gained  in  splendour  and  effective- 
ness, from  their  simpler  and  severer  setting.  One  could  see,  too, 
the  length  of  the  small  neck  and  of  the  thin  falling  shoulders. 
It  was  a  face  now  which  made  many  a  stranger  in  the  Clough 
End  streets  stop  and  look  backward  after  meeting  it.  Not  so 
much  because  of  its  beauty,  for  it  was  still  too  thin  and  starved- 
looking  for  beauty,  as  because  of  a  singular  daring  and  brilliance, 
a  sense  of  wild  and  yet  conscious  power  it  left  behind  it.  The 
child  had  grown  a  great  piece  in  the  last  year,  so  that  her  knees 
were  hardly  decently  covered  by  the  last  year's  cotton  frock  she 
wore,  and  her  brown  sticks  of  arms  were  far  beyond  her  sleeves. 
David  had  looked  at  her  once  or  twice  lately  with  a  new  kind  of 


84  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

scrutiny.  He  decided  that  she  was  a  '  rum-looking '  creature,  not 
the  least  like  anybody  else's  sister,  and  on  the  whole  his  raw 
impression  was  that  she  was  plain. 

'  How'll  I  know  yp'll  not  cheat  ? '  she  said  at  last,  getting  up 
and  surveying  him  with  her  arms  akimbo. 

'Can't  tell,  I'm  sure,'  was  all  David  vouchsafed.  'Yo  mun 
find  out.' 

Louie  studied  him  threateningly. 

'  Weel,  I'd  be  even  wi  yo  soomhow,'  was  her  final  conclusion  ; 
and  disappearing  through  the  ruined  doorway,  she  ran  down  the 
slope  to  where  one  of  the  great  mill-stones  lay  hidden  in  the 
heather,  and  diving  into  its  central  hole,  produced  the  book, 
keenly  watched  the  while  by  David,  who  took  mental  note  of  the 
hiding-place. 

'Naw  then,'  she  said,  walking  up  to  him  with  her  hands 
behind  her  and  the  book  in  them,  '  tell  me  yor  secret.' 

David  first  forcibly  abstracted  the  book  and  made  believe  to 
box  her  ears,  then  went  back  to  his  seat  and  his  boat. 

'  Go  on,  can't  yo  1 '  exclaimed  Louie,  after  a  minute,  stamping 
at  him. 

David  laid  down  his  boat  deliberately. 

'  Well,  yo  won't  like  it,'  he  said ;  '  I  know  that.  But — I'm  off 
to  Manchester,  that's  aw — as  soon  as  I  can  goo  ;  as  soon  as  iver  I 
can  hear  of  onything.  An  I'm  gooin  if  I  don't  hear  of  onything. 
I'm  gooin  onyways  ;  I'm  tired  o'  this.  So  now  yo  know.' 

Louie  st  ired  at  him. 

'  Yo  ain't ! '  she  said,  passionately,  as  though  she  were 
choking. 

David  instinctively  put  up  his  hands  to  keep  her  off.  He 
thought  she  would  have  fallen  upon  him  there  and  then  and 
beaten  him  for  his  '  secret.' 

But,  instead,  she  flung  away  out  of  the  smithy,  and  David  was 
left  alone  and  in  amazement.  Then  he  got  up  and  went  to  look, 
stirred  with  the  sudden  fear  that  she  might  have  run  off  to  the 
farm  with  the  news  of  what  he  had  been  saying,  which  would 
have  precipitated  matters  unpleasantly. 

No  one  was  to  be  seen  from  outside,  either  on  the  moor  path 
or  in  the  fields  beyond,  and  she  could  not  possibly  have  got  out 
of  sight  so  soon.  So  he  searched  among  the  heather  and  the 
bilberry  hummocks,  till  he  caught  sight  of  a  bit  of  print  cotton  in 
a  hollow  just  below  the  quaint  stone  shooting-hut,  built  some 
sixty  years  ago  on  the  side  of  the  Scout  for  the  convenience  of 
sportsmen.  David  stalked  the  cotton,  and  found  her  lying  prone 
and  with  her  hat,  as  usual,  firmly  held  down  over  her  ears.  At 
sight  of  her  something  told  him  very  plainly  he  had  been  a  brute 
to  tell  her  his  news  so.  There  was  a  strong  moral  shock  which 
for  the  moment  transformed  him. 

He  went  and  lifted  her  up  in  spite  of  her  struggles.  Her  face 
was  crimson  with  tears,  but  she  hit  out  at  him  wildly  to  prevent 
his  seeing  them.  '  Now,  Louie,  look  here,'  he  said,  holding  her 


CHAP,  vin  CHILDHOOD  85 

hands,  '  I  didna  mean  to  tell  yo  short  and  sharp  like  that,  but  yo 
do  put  a  body's  back  up  so,  there's  no  bearin  it.  Don't  take  on, 
Louie.  I'll  coom  back  when  I've  found  soomthin,  an  take  yo 
away,  too,  niver  fear.  Theer's  lots  o'  things  gells  can  do  in 
Manchester — tailorin,  or  machinin,  or  dress-makin,  or  soomthin 
like  that.  But  yo  must  get  a  bit  older,  an  I  must  find  a  place 
for  us  to  live  in,  so  theer's  naw  use  fratchin,  like  a  spiteful  hen. 
Yo  must  bide  and  I  must  bide.  But  I'll  coom  back  for  yp,  I  swear 
I  will,  an  we'll  get  shut  on  Aunt  Hannah,  an  live  in  a  little  place 
by  ourselves,  as  merry  as  larks.' 

He  looked  at  her  appealingly.  Her  head  was  turned  sullenly 
away  from  him,  her  thin  chest  still  heaved  with  sobs.  But  when 
he  stopped  speaking  she  jerked  round  upon  him. 

'  Leave  me  bebiat,  an  I'll  murder  her  ! ' 

The  child's  look  was  demoniacal.  '  No,  yo  won't,'  said  David, 
laughing.  '  I'  th'  fust  place,  Aunt  Hannah  could  settle  a  midge 
like  yo  wi  yan  finger.  I'  th'  second,  hangin  isn't  a  coomfortable 
way  o'  deein.  Yo  wait  till  I  coom  for  yo,  an  when  we'st  ha  got 
reet  away,  an  can  just  laugh  in  her  face  if  she  riles  us, — that  11 
spite  her  mich  moor  nor  murderin.' 

The  black  eyes  gleamed  uncannily  for  a  moment  and  the 
sobbing  ceased.  But  the  gleam  passed  away,  and  the  child  sat 
staring  at  the  moorland  distance,  seeing  nothing.  There  was 
such  an  unconscious  animal  pain  in  the  attitude,  the  pain  of  the 
creature  that  feels  itself  alone  and  deserted,  that  David  watched 
her  in  a  puzzled  silence.  Louie  was  always  mysterious,  whether 
in  her  rages  or  her  griefs,  but  he  had  never  seen  her  sob  quite  like 
this  before.  He  felt  a  sort  of  strangeness  in  her  fixed  gaze,  and 
with  a  certain  timidity  he  put  out  his  arm  and  laid  it  round  her 
shoulder.  Still  she  did  not  move.  Then  he  slid  up  closer  in 
the  heather,  and  kissed  her.  His  heart,  which  had  seemed  all 
frostbound  for  months,  melted,  and  that  hunger  for  love — home- 
love,  mother-love — which  was,  perhaps,  at  the  very  bottom  of  his 
moody  complex  youth,  found  a  voice. 

'  Louie,  couldn't  yo  be  nice  to  me  soomtimes — couldn't  yo  just 
take  an  interest,  like,  yo  know — as  if  yo  cared  a  bit — couldn't  yo  ? 
Other  gells  do.  I'm  a  brute  to  yo,  I  know,  often,  but  yo  keep 
aggin  an  teasin,  an  theer's  niver  a  bit  o'  peace.  Look  here,  Loo, 
yo  give  up,  an  I'st  give  up.  Theer's  nobbut  us  two — nawbody  else 
cares  a  lia'porth  about  the  yan  or  the  tother — coom  along  !  yo  give 
up,  an  I'st  give  up.' 

He  looked  at  her  anxiously.  There  was  a  new  manliness  in 
his  tone,  answering  to  his  growing  manliness  of  stature.  Two 
slow  tears  rolled  down  her  cheeks,  but  she  said  nothing.  She 
couldn't  for  the  life  of  her.  She  blinked,  furiously  fighting  with 
her  tears,  and  at  last  she  put  up  an  impatient  hand  which  left  a 
long  brown  streak  across  her  miserable  little  face. 

'  Yo  havn't  got  JLO  trade,'  she  said.     '  Yo'll  be  clemmed.' 

David  withdrew  his  arm,  and  gulped  down  his  rebuff.  '  No, 
I  sha'n't,' he  said.  'Now  you  just  listen  here.'  And  he  described 


86  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

how,  the  day  before,  he  had  been  to  see  Mr.  Ancrum,  to  consult 
him  about  leaving  Kinder,  and  what  had  come  of  it. 

He  had  been  just  in  time.  Mr.  Ancrum,  worn,  ill,  and 
harassed  to  death,  had  been  cheered  a  little  during  his  last  days 
at  Clough  End  by  the  appearance  of  David,  very  red  and  mono- 
syllabic, on  his  doorstep.  The  lad's  return,  as  he  soon  perceived, 
was  due  simply  to  the  stress  of  his  own  affairs,  and  not  to  any 
knowledge  of  or  sympathy  with  the  minister's  miseries.  But, 
none  the  less,  there  was  a  certain  balm  in  it  for  Mr.  Ancrum,  and 
they  had  sat  long  discussing  matters.  Yes,  the  minister  was 
going — would  look  out  at  Manchester  for  an  opening  for  David, 
in  the  bookselling  trade  by  preference,  and  would  write  at  once. 
But  Davy  must  not  leave  a  quarrel  behind  him.  He  must,  if 
possible,  get  his  uncle's  consent,  which  Mr.  Ancrum  thought 
would  be  given. 

'  I'm  willing  to  lend  you  a  hand,  Davy,'  he  had  said,  '  for 
you're  on  the  way  to  no  trade  but  loafing  as  you  are  now  ;  but 
square  it  with  Grieve.  You  can,  if  you  don't  shirk  the  trouble  of 
it.' 

Whereupon  Davy  had  made  a  wry  face  and  said  nothing. 
But  to  Louie  he  expressed  himself  plainly  enough. 

Til  not  say  owt  to  oather  on  'em,'  he  said,  pointing  to  the 
chimneys  of  the  farm,  '  till  the  day  I  bid  'em  good-bye.  Uncle 
Reuben,  mebbe,  ud  be  for  givin  me  somethin  to  start  wi,  an  Aunt 
Hannah  ud  be  for  cloutin  him  over  the  head  for  thinkin  of  it. 
No,  I'll  not  be  beholden  to  van  o'  them.  I've  got  a  shillin  or  two 
for  my  fare,  an  I'll  keep  mysel. ' 

'  What  wages  ull  yo  get  ? '  inquired  Louie  sharply. 

'  Nothin  very  fat,  that's  sure,'  laughed  David.  '  If  Mr.  Ancrum 
can  do  as  he  says,  an  find  me  a  place  in  a  book-shop,  they'll, 
mebbe,  gie  me  six  shillin  to  begin  wi.' 

'  An  what  ull  yo  do  wi  'at  ? ' 

'  Live  on't,'  replied  David  briefly. 

'  Yo  conno,  I  tell  yo  !  Yo'll  ha  food  an  firin,  cloos,  an  lodgin 
to  pay  out  o't.  Yo  conno  do  't — soa  theer. ' 

Louie  looked  him  up  and  down  defiantly.  David  was  oddly 
struck  with  the  practical  knowledge  her  remark  showed.  How 
did  such  a  wild  imp  know  anything  about  the  cost  of  lodging  and 
firing  ? 

'  I  tell  yo  I'll  live  on't, '  he  replied  with  energy ;  '  I'll  get  a 
room  for  half  a  crown — two  shillin,  p'r'aps — an  I'll  live  on  six- 
pence a  day,  see  if  I  don't.' 

'  See  if  yo  do  ! '  retorted  Louie,  '  clemm  on  it  more  like.' 

'That's  all  yo  know  about  it,  miss,'  said  David,  in  a  tone, 
however,  of  high  good  humour  ;  and,  stretching  one  of  his  hands 
down  a  little  further  into  his  trousers  pocket,  he  drew  out  a 
paper-covered  book,  so  that  just  the  top  of  it  appeared.  '  Yo're 
allus  naggiu  about  books.  Well  ;  I  tell  yo,  I've  got  an  idea  out 
o'  thissen  ull  be  worth  shillins  a  week  to  me.  It's  about  Benjamin 
Franklin.  Never  yo  mind  who  Benjamin  Franklin  wor  ;  but  he 


CHAP    vin  CHILDHOOD  87 

wor  a  varra  cute  soart  of  a  felly ;  an  when  he  wor  yoong,  an 
had  nobbut  a  few  shilling  a  week,  he  made  shift  to  save  soom  o' 
them  shilling,  becos  he  found  he  could  do  without  eatin  flesh 
meat,  an  that  wi  bread  an  meal  an  green  stuff,  a  mon  could  do 
yery  well,  an  save  soom  brass  every  week.  When  I  go  to  Man- 
chester,' continued  David  emphatically,  'I  shall  niver  touch 
meat.  I  shall  buy  a  bag  o'  oatmeal  like  Grandfeyther  Grieve 
lived  on,  boil  it  for  mysel,  wi  a  sup  o'  milk,  perhaps,  an  soom 
salt  or  treacle  to  gi  it  a  taste.  An  I'll  buy  apples  an  pears  an 
oranges  cheap  soomwhere,  an  store  'em.  Yo  mun  ha  a  deal  o' 
fruit  when  yo  doan't  ha  meat.  Fourpence  ! '  cried  Davy,  his 
enthusiasm  rising,  '  I'll  live  on  thruppence  a  day,  as  sure  as  yo're 
sittin  theer !  Seven  thruppences  is  one  an  nine  ;  lodgin,  two 
shillin — three  an  nine.  Two  an  three  left  over,  for  cloos,  firm, 
an  pocket  money.  Why,  I'll  be  rich  before  yo  can  look  roun ! 
An  then,  o'  coorse,  they'll  not  keep  me  long  on  six  shillins  a  week. 
In  the  book-trade  I'll  soon  be  wuth  ten,  an  moor ! ' 

And,  springing  up,  he  began  to  dance  a  s6rt  of  cut  and  shuffle 
before  her  out  of  sheer  spirits.  Louie  surveyed  him  with  a  flushed 
and  sparkling  face.  The  nimbleness  of  David's  wits  had  never 
come  home  to  her  till  now. 

'  What  ull  I  earn  when  I  coom  ? '  she  demanded  abruptly. 

David  stopped  his  cut  and  shuffle,  and  took  critical  stock  of 
his  sister  for  a  moment. 

'  Now,  look  here,  Louie,  yo're  goin  to  stop  where  yo  are,  a 
good  bit  yet,'  he  replied  decidedly.  '  Yo'll  have  to  wait  two  year 
or  so — moor  'n  one,  onyways,'  he  went  on  hastily,  warned  by  her 
start  and  fierce  expression.  '  Yo  know,  they  can  ha  th'  law  on 
yo,'  and  he  jerked  his  thumb  over  his  shoulder  towards  the  farm. 
'  Boys  is  all  reet,  but  gells  can't  do  nothink  till  they're  sixteen. 
They  mun  stay  wi  th'  foak  as  browt  'em  up,  an  if  they  run  away 
afore  their  sixteenth  birthday — they  gets  put  in  prison.' 

David  poured  out  his  legal  fictions  hastily,  three  parts  con- 
vinced of  them  at  any  rate,  and  watched  eagerly  for  their  effect 
on  Louie. 

She  tossed  her  head  scornfully.  '  Doan't  b'lieve  it.  Yo're 
jest  tellin  lees  to  get  shut  o'  me.  Nex  summer  if  yo  doan't  send 
for  me,  I'll  run  away,  whativer  yo  may  say.  So  yo  know.' 

'  Yo're  a  tormentin  thing  ! '  exclaimed  David,  exasperated, 
and  began  savagely  to  kick  stones  down  the  hill.  Then,  recover- 
ing himself,  he  came  and  sat  down  beside  her  again. 

'  I  doan't  want  to  get  shut  on  yo,  Louie.  But  yo  won't 
understand  nothin.' 

He  stopped,  and  began  to  bite  at  a  stalk  of  heather,  by  way  of 
helping  himself.  His  mind  was  full  of  vague  and  yet  urgent 
thoughts  as  to  what  became  of  girls  in  large  towns  with  no  one  to 
look  after  them,  things  he  had  heard  said  at  the  public-house, 
things  he  had  read.  He  had  never  dreamt  of  leaving  Louie  to 
Aunt  Hannah's  tender  mercies.  Of  course  he  must  take  her  away 
when  he  could.  She  was  his  charge,  his  belonging.  But  all  the 


88  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

same  she  was  a  'limb';  in  his  opinion  she  always  would  be  a 
'limb.'  How  could  he  be  sure  of  her  getting  work,  and  who  on 
earth  was  to  look  after  her  when  he  was  away  ? 

Suddenly  Louie  broke  in  on  his  perplexities. 

'  I'll  go  tailorin,'  she  cried  triumphantly.  '  Now  I  know — it  wor 
t'  Wigsons'  cousin  Em'ly  went  to  Manchester  ;  an  she  earned  nine 
shillin  a  week — nine  shillin  I  tell  yo,  an  found  her  own  thread. 
Yo'll  be  takin  ten  shillin,  yo  say,  nex  year  ?  an  I'll  be  takin  nine. 
That's  nineteen  shillin  fur  th'  two  on  us.  Isn't  it  nineteen 
shillin  ? '  she  said  peremptorily,  seizing  his  arm  with  her  long 
fingers. 

'  Well,  I  dessay  it  is,'  said  David,  reluctantly.  '  An  precious 
tired  yo'll  be  o'  settin  stitchin  mornin,  noon,  an  neet.  Like  to 
see  yo  do  't.' 

'  I'd  do  it  fur  nine  shillin,'  she  said  doggedly,  and  sat  looking 
straight  before  her,  with  wide  glittering  eyes.  She  understood 
from  David's  talk  that,  what  with  meal,  apples,  and  greenstuff, 
your  '  eatin '  need  cost  you  nothing.  There  would  be  shillings 
and  shillings  to  buy  things  with.  The  child  who  never  had  a 
copper  but  what  Uncle  Reuben  gave  her,  who  passed  her  whole 
existence  in  greedily  coveting  the  unattainable  and  in  chafing 
under  the  rule  of  an  iron  and  miserly  thrift,  felt  suddenly  intoxi- 
cated by  this  golden  prospect  of  illimitable  'buying.'  And  what 
could  possibly  prevent  its  coming  true  ?  Any  fool — such  as 
'  Wigson's  Em'ly ' — could  earn  nine  shillings  a  week  at  tailoring  ; 
and  to  make  money  at  your  stomach's  expense  seemed  suddenly 
to  put  you  in  possession  of  a  bank  on  which  the  largest  drawings 
were  possible.  It  all  looked  so  ingenious,  so  feasible,  so  wholly 
within  the  grip  of  that  indomitable  will  the  child  felt  tense  within 
her. 

So  the  two  sat  gazing  out  over  the  moorland.  It  was  the  first 
summer  day,  fresh  and  timid  yet,  as  though  the  world  and  the 
sun  were  still  ill-acquainted.  Down  below,  over  the  sparkling 
brook,  an  old  thorn  was  quivering  in  the  warm  breeze,  its  bright 
thin  green  shining  against  the  brown  heather.  The  larches  alone 
had  as  yet  any  richness  of  leaf,  but  the  sycamore-buds  glittered  in 
the  sun,  and  the  hedges  in  the  lower  valley  made  wavy  green 
lines  delightful  to  the  eye.  A  warm  soft  air  laden  with  moist 
scents  of  earth  and  plant  bathed  the  whole  mountain-side,  and 
played  with  Louie's  hair.  Nature  wooed  them  with  her  best,  and 
neither  had  a  thought  or  a  look  for  her. 

Suddenly  Louie  sprang  up. 

'  Theer's  Aunt  Hannah  shoutin.     I  mun  goo  an  get  t'  coos.' 

David  ran  down  the  hill  with  her. 

'What'll  yo  do  if  I  tell?'  she  inquired  maliciously  at  the 
bottom. 

'  If  yo  do  I  shall  cut  at  yance,  an  yo'll  ha  all  the  longer  time 
to  be  by  yoursen. ' 

A  darkness  fell  over  the  girl's  hard  shining  gaze.  She  turned 
away  abruptly,  then,  when  she  had  gone  a  few  steps,  turned  and 


CHAP,  viii  CHILDHOOD  89 

came  back  to  where  David  stood  whistling  and  calling  for  the 
dogs.  She  caught  him  suddenly  from  behind  round  the  neck. 
Naturally  he  thought  she  was  up  to  some  mischief,  and  struggled 
away  from  her  with  an  angry  exclamation.  But  she  held  him 
tight  and  thrust  something  hard  and  sweet  against  his  lips. 
Involuntarily  his  mouth  opened  and  admitted  an  enticing  cake  of 
butter-scotch.  She  rammed  it  in  with  her  wiry  little  hand  so 
that  he  almost  choked,  and  then  with  a  shrill  laugh  she  turned 
and  fled,  leaping  down  the  heather  between  the  boulders,  across 
the  brook,  over  the  wall,  and  out  of  sight. 

David  was  left  behind,  sucking.  The  sweetness  he  was  con- 
scious of  was  not  all  in  the  mouth.  Never  that  he  could  remem- 
ber had  Louie  shown  him  any  such  mark  of  favour. 

Next  day  David  was  sent  down  with  the  donkey-cart  to  Clough 
End  to  bring  up  some  weekly  stores  for  the  family,  Hannah 
specially  charging  him  to  call  at  the  post-office  and  inquire  for 
letters.  He  started  about  nine  o'clock,  and  the  twelve  o'clock 
dinner  passed  by  without  his  reappearance. 

When  she  had  finished  her  supply  of  meat  and  suet-pudding, 
after  a  meal  during  which  no  one  of  the  three  persons  at  table 
had  uttered  a  word,  Louie  abruptly  pushed  her  plate  back  again 
towards  Hannah. 

'  David  ! '  was  all  she  said. 

'  Mind  your  mariners,  miss,'  said  Hannah,  angrily.  '  Them  as 
cooms  late  gets  nowt.'  And,  getting  up,  she  cleared  the  table 
and  put  the  food  away  with  even  greater  rapidity  than  usual. 
The  kitchen  was  no  sooner  quite  clear  than  the  donkey-cart  was 
heard  outside,  and  David  appeared,  crimsoned  with  heat,  and 
panting  from  the  long  tug  uphill,  through  which  he  had  just 
dragged  the  donkey. 

He  carried  a  letter,  which  he  put  down  on  the  table.  Then  he 
looked  round  the  kitchen. 

'  Aunt's  put  t'  dinner  away,'  said  Louie,  shortly,  '  'cos  yo  came 
late.' 

David's  expression  changed.  '  Then  nex  time  she  wants  owt, 
she  can  fetch  it  fro  Clough  End  hersel,'  he  said  violently,  and 
went  out. 

Hannah  came  forward  and  laid  eager  hands  on  the  letter, 
which  was  from  London,  addressed  in  a  clerk's  hand. 

'  Louie  ! '  she  called  imperatively,  '  tak  un  out  soom  bread-an- 
drippin. ' 

Louie  put  some  on  a  plate,  and  went  out  with  it  to  the  cow- 
house, where  David  sat  on  a  stool,  occupying  himself  in  cutting 
the  pages  of  a  number  of  the  Vegetarian  Neivs,  lent  him  in 
Clough  End,  with  trembling  hands,  while  a  fierce  red  spot  burnt 
in  either  cheek. 

'  Tak  it  away  ! '  he  said,  almost  knocking  the  plate  out  of 
Louie's  hands  ;  '  it  chokes  me  to  eat  a  crumb  o'  hers.' 

As  Louie  was  bearing  the  plate  back  through  the  yard,  Uncle 


90  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

Reuben  came  by.  '  What's — what's  'at  ? '  he  said,  peering  short- 
sightedly at  what  she  held.  Every  month  of  late  Reuben's  back 
had  seemed  to  grow  rounder,  his  sight  less,  and  his  wits  of  less 
practical  use. 

4  Summat  for  David,'  said  Louie,  shortly,  '  'cos  Aunt  Hannah 
woan't  gie  him  no  dinner.  But  he  woan't  ha  it.' 

Reuben's  sudden  look  of  trouble  was  unmistakable.  '  Whar  is 
he?' 

'  I'  th'  coo-house. ' 

Reuben  went  his  way,  and  found  the  dinnerless  boy  deep,  or 
apparently  deep,  in  recipes  for  vegetable  soups. 

'  What  made  yo  late,  Davy  ? '  he  asked  him,  as  he  stood  over 
him. 

David  had  more  than  half  a  mind  not  to  answer,  but  at  last 
he  jerked  out  fiercely,  '  Waitin  for  th'  second  post,  fust ;  then  t' 
donkey  fell  down  half  a  mile  out  o'  t'  town,  an  th'  things  were 
spilt.  There  was  nobody  about,  an'  I  had  a  job  to  get  'un  up 
at  a'.' 
Reuben  nervously  thrust  his  hands  far  into  his  coat-pockets. 

'  doom  wi  me,  Davy,  an  I'st  mak  yor  aunt  gie  yer  yor  dinner. ' 

'  I  wouldn't  eat  a  morsel  if  she  went  down  on  her  bended 
knees  to  me,'  the  lad  broke  out,  and,  springing  up,  he  strode 
sombrely  through  the  yard  and  into  the  fields. 

Reuben  went  slowly  back  into  the  house.  Hannah  was  in  the 
parlour — so  he  saw  through  the  half -opened  door.  He  went  into 
the  room,  which  smelt  musty  and  close  from  disuse.  Hannah  was 
standing  over  the  open  drawer  of  an  old-fashioned  corner  cup- 
board, carefully  scanning  a  letter  and  enclosure  before  she  locked 
them  up. 

'  Is  't  Mr.  Gurney's  money  ? '  Reuben  said  to  her,  in  a  queer 
voice. 

She  was  startled,  not  having  heard  him  come  in,  but  she  put 
what  she  held  into  the  drawer  all  the  more  deliberately,  and 
turned  the  key. 

'Ay,  'tis.' 

Reuben  sat  himself  down  on  one  of  the  hard  chairs  beside  the 
table  in  the  middle  of  the  room.  The  light  streaming  through 
the  shutters  Hannah  had  just  opened  streamed  in  on  his  grizzling 
head  and  face  working  with  emotion. 

'It's  stolen  money,'  he  said  hoarsely.  '  Yo're  stealin  it  fro 
Davy.' 

Hannah  smiled  grimly,  and  withdrew  the  key. 

'  I'm  paying  missel  an  yo,  Reuben  Grieve,  for  t'  keep  o'  two 
•wuthless  brats  as  cost  moor  nor  they  pays,'  she  said,  with  an 
accent  which  somehow  sent  a  shiver  through  Reuben.  '  /  don't 
keep  udder  f oaks'  childer  fur  nothin.' 

'  Yo've  had  moor  nor  they  cost  for  seven  year,'  said  Reuben, 
•with  the  same  thick  tense  utterance.  '  Yo  should  let  Davy  ha  it, 
an  gie  him  a  trade.' 

Hannah  walked  up  to  the  door  and  shut  it. 


CHAP,  viu  CHILDHOOD  91 

'  I  should,  should  I  ?  An  who'll  pay  for  Louie — for  your 
luvely  limb  of  a  niece  ?  It  'ud  tak  about  that,'  and  she  pointed 
grimly  to  the  drawer,  '  to  coover  what  she  wastes  an  spiles  i'  t' 
yeer.' 

'  Yo  get  her  work,  Hannah.  Her  bit  and  sup  cost  yo  most 
nothin.  I  cud  wark  a  bit  moor — soa  cud  yo.  Yo're  hurtin  me  i' 
mi  conscience,  Hannah — yo're  coomin  atwixt  me  an  th'  Lord  ! ' 

He  brought  a  shaking  hand  down  on  the  damask  table-cloth 
among  the  wool  mats  and  the  chapel  hymn-books  which  adorned 
it.  His  long,  loose  frame  had  drawn  itself  up  with  a  certain 
dignity. 

'  Ha  done  wi  your  cantin ! '  said  Hannah  under  her  breath, 
laying  her  two  hands  on  the  table,  and  stooping  down  so  as  to 
face  him  with  more  effect.  The  phrase  startled  Reuben  with  a 
kind  of  horror.  Whatever  words  might  have  passed  between 
them,  never  yet  that  he  could  remember  had  his  wife  allowed 
herself  a  sneer  at  his  religion.  It  seemed  to  him  suddenly  as 
though  he  and  she  were  going  fast  downhill — slipping  to  perdi- 
tion, because  of  Sandy's  six  hundred  pounds. 

But  she  cowed  him — she  always  did.  She  stayed  a  moment  in 
the  same  bent  and  threatening  position,  coercing  him  with  angry 
eyes.  Then  she  straightened  herself,  and  moved  away. 

'Let  t'  lad  tak  hisself  off  if  he  wants  to,'  she  said,  an  iron 
resolution  in  her  voice.  '  I  told  yo  so  afore — I  woan't  cry  for  'im. 
But  as  long  as  Louie's  here,  an  I  ha  to  keep  her,  I'll  want  that 
money,  an  every  penny  on't.  If  it  bean't  paid,  she  may  go  too  ! ' 

'  Yo'd  not  turn  her  out,  Hannah  ? '  cried  Eeuben,  instinctively 
putting  out  an  arm  to  feel  that  the  door  was  closed. 

'  She'd  not  want  for  a  livin,'  replied  Hannah,  with  a  bitter 
sneer  ;  '  she's  her  mither's  child.' 

Reuben  rose  slowly,  shaking  all  over.  He  opened  the  door 
with  difficulty,  groped  his  way  out  of  the  front  passage,  then  went 
heavily  through  the  yard  and  into  the  fields.  There  he  wandered 
by  himself  for  a  couple  of  hours,  altogether  forgetting  some  newly 
dropped  lambs  to  which  he  had  been  anxiously  attending.  For 
months  past,  ever  since  his  conscience  had  been  roused  on  the 
subject  of  his  brother's,  children,  the  dull,  incapable  man  had  been 
slowly  reconceiving  the  woman  with  whom  he  had  lived  some  five- 
and-twenty  years,  and  of  late  the  process  had  been  attended  with 
a  kind  of  agony.  The  Hannah  Martin  he  had  married  had  been 
a  hard  body  indeed,  but  respectable,  upright,  with  the  same  moral 
instincts  as  himself.  She  had  kept  the  farm  together — he  knew 
that ;  he  could  not  have  lived  without  her,  and  in  all  practical 
respects  she  had  been  a  good  and  industrious  wife.  He  had 
coveted  her  industry  and  her  strong  will ;  and,  having  got  the 
use  of  them,  he  had  learnt  to  put  up  with  her  contempt  for  him, 
and  to  fit  his  softer  nature  to  hers.  Yet  it  seemed  to  him  that 
there  had  always  been  certain  conditions  implied  in  this  subjection 
of  his,  and  that  she  was  breaking  them.  He  could  not  have  been 
fetching  and  carrying  all  these  years  for  a  woman  who  could 


92  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

go  on  wilfully  appropriating  money  that  did  not  belong  to  her, — 
who  could  even  speak  with  callous  indifference  of  the  prospect 
of  turning  out  her  niece  to  a  life  of  sin. 

He  thought  of  Sandy's  money  with  loathing.  It  was  like  the 
cursed  stuff  that  Achan  had  brought  into  the  camp — an  evil 
leaven  fermenting  in  their  common  life,  and  raising  monstrous 
growths. 

Reuben  Grieve  did  not  demand  much  of  himself;  a  richer 
and  more  spiritual  nature  would  have  thought  his  ideals  lament- 
ably poor.  But,  such  as  they  were,  the  past  year  had  proved 
that  he  could  not  fall  below  them  without  a  dumb  anguish,  with- 
out a  sense  of  shutting  himself  out  from  grace.  He  felt  himself 
— by  his  fear  of  his  wife — made  a  partner  in  Hannah's  covetous- 
ness,  in  Hannah's  cruelty  towards  Sandy's  children.  Already,  it 
seemed  to  him,  the  face  of  Christ  was  darkened,  the  fountain  of 
grace  dried  up.  All  those  appalling  texts  of  judgment  and  repro- 
bation he  had  listened  to  so  often  in  chapel,  protected  against 
them  by  that  warm  inward  certainty  of  '  election,'  seemed  to  be 
now  pressing  against  a  bared  and  jeopardised  soul. 

But  if  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Gurney,  Hannah  would  never  forgive 
him  till  her  dying  day  ;  and  the  thought  of  making  her  his 
enemy  for  good  put  him  in  a  cold  sweat. 

After  much  pacing  of  the  upper  meadows  he  came  heavily 
down  at  last  to  see  to  his  lambs.  Davy  was  just  jumping  the 
wall  on  to  his  uncle's  land,  having  apparently  come  down  the 
Frimley  path.  "When  he  saw  his  uncle  he  thrust  his  hands  into 
his  pockets,  began  to  whistle,  and  came  on  with  a  devil-may-care 
swing  of  the  figure.  They  met  in  a  gateway  between  two  fields. 

'  Whar  yo  been,  Davy  ? '  asked  Reuben,  looking  at  him 
askance,  and  holding  the  gate  so  as  to  keep  him. 

'  To  Dawson's,'  said  the  boy,  sharply. 

Reuben's  face  brightened.  Then  the  lad's  empty  stomach 
must  have  been  filled  ;  for  he  knew  that  '  Dawsons '  were  kind  to 
him.  He  ventured  to  look  at  him  more  directly,  and,  as  he  did 
so,  something  in  the  attitude  of  the  proud  handsome  stripling 
reminded  him  of  Sandy — Sandy,  in  the  days  of  his  youth,  coming 
down  to  show  his  prosperous  self  at  the  farm.  He  put  his  large 
soil-stained  hand  on  David's  shoulder. 

'  Goo  yor  ways  in,  Davy.     I'll  see  yo  ha  your  reets.' 

David  opened  his  eyes  at  him,  astounded.  There  is  nothing 
more  startling  in  human  relations  than  the  strong  emotion  of 
weak  people. 

Reuben  would  have  liked  to  say  something  else,  but  his  lips 
opened  and  shut  in  vain.  The  boy,  too,  was  hopelessly  embar- 
rassed. At  last,  Reuben  let  the  gate  fall  and  walked  off,  with 
downcast  head,  to  where,  in  the  sheep-pen,  he  had  a  few  hours 
before  bound  an  orphan  lamb  to  a  refractory  foster-mother. 
The  foster-mother's  resistance  had  broken  down,  she  was  lying 
patiently  and  gently  while  the  thin  long-legged  creature  sucked  ; 
when  it  was  frightened  away  by  Reuben's  approach  she  trotted 


CHAP,  ix  CHILDHOOD  93 

bleating  after  it.  In  his  disturbed  state  of  feeling  the  parallel, 
or  rather  the  contrast,  between  the  dumb  animal  and  the  woman 
struck  home. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BUT  the  crisis  which  had  looked  so  near  delayed  ! 

Poor  Reuben  !  The  morning  after  his  sudden  show  of  spirit 
to  David  he  felt  himself,  to  his  own  miserable  surprise,  no  more 
courageous  than  he  had  been  before  it.  Yet  the  impression 
made  had  gone  too  deep  to  end  in  nothingness.  He  contracted  a 
habit  of  getting  by  himself  in  the  fields  and  puzzling  his  brain 
with  figures — an  occupation  so  unfamiliar  and  exhausting  that  it 
wore  him  a  good  deal ;  and  Hannah,  when  he  came  in  at  night, 
would  wonder,  with  a  start,  whether  he  were  beginning  '  to  break 
up.'  But  it  possessed  him  more  and  more.  Hannah  would  not 
give  up  the  money,  but  David  must  have  his  rights.  How  could 
it  be  done  ?  For  the  first  time  Reuben  fell  to  calculation  over  his 
money  matters,  which  he  did  not  ask  Hannah  to  revise.  But 
meanwhile  he  lived  in  a  state  of  perpetual  inward  excitement 
which  did  not  escape  his  wife.  She  could  get  no  clue  to  it,  how- 
ever, and  became  all  the  more  forbidding  in  the  household  the 
more  she  was  invaded  by  this  wholly  novel  sense  of  difficulty  in 
managing  her  husband. 

Yet  she  was  not  without  a  sense  that  if  she  could  but  contrive 
to  alter  her  ways  with  the  children  it  would  be  well  for  her.  Mr. 
Gurney's  cheque  was  safely  put  away  in  the  Clough  End  bank, 
and  clearly  her  best  policy  would  have  been  to  make  things  toler- 
able for  the  two  persons  on  whose  proceedings — if  they  did  but 
know  it ! — the  arrival  of  future  cheques  in  some  measure 
depended.  But  Hannah  had  not  the  cleverness  which  makes 
the  successful  hypocrite.  And  for  some  time  past  there  had 
been  a  strange  unmanageable  change  in  her  feelings  towards 
Sandy's  orphans.  Since  Reuben  had  made  her  conscious  that  she 
was  robbing  them,  she  had  gone  nearer  to  an  active  hatred  than 
ever  before.  And,  indeed,  hatred  in  such  a  case  is  the  most 
natural  outcome  ;  for  it  is  little  else  than  the  soul's  perverse 
attempt  to  justify  to  itself  its  own  evil  desire. 

David,  however,  when  once  his  rage  over  Hannah's  latest 
offence  had  cooled,  behaved  to  his  aunt  much  as  he  had  done  before 
it.  He  was  made  placable  by  his  secret  hopes,  and  touched  by 
Reuben's  advances — though  of  these  last  he  took  no  practical 
account  whatever  ;  and  he  must  wait  for  his  letter.  So  he  went 
back  ungraciously  to  his  daily  tasks.  Meanwhile  he  and  Louie, 
on  the  strength  of  the  great  coup  in  prospect,  were  better  friends 
than  they  had  ever  been,  and  his  consideration  for  her  went  up 
as  he  noticed  that,  when  she  pleased,  the  reckless  creature  could 
keep  a  secret  '  as  close  as  wax. ' 

The  weeks,  however,  passed  away,  and  still  no  letter  came  for 


94  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

David.  The  shepherds'  meetings — first  at  Clough  End  for  the 
Cheshire  side  of  the  Scout,  and  then  at  the  '  Snake  Inn '  for  the 
Sheffield  side — when  the  strayed  sheep  of  the  year  were  restored 
to  their  owners,  came  and  went  in  due  course  ;  sheep- washing  and 
sheep-shearing  were  over  ;  the  summer  was  halfway  through;  and 
still  no  word  from  Mr.  Ancrum. 

David,  full  of  annoyance  and  disappointment,  was  seething 
with  fresh  plans — he  and  Louie  spent  hours  discussing  them  at 
the  smithy — when  suddenly  an  experience  overtook  him,  which 
for  the  moment  effaced  all  his  nascent  ambitions,  and  entirely  did 
away  with  Louie's  new  respect  for  him. 

It  was  on  this  wise. 

Mr.  Ancrum  had  left  Clough  End  towards  the  end  of  June. 
The  congregation  to  which  he  ministered,  and  to  which  Reuben 
Grieve  belonged,  represented  one  of  those  curious  and  independent 
developments  of  the  religious  spirit  which  are  to  be  found 
scattered  through  the  teeming  tovvns  and  districts  of  northern 
England.  They  had  no  connection  with  any  recognised  religious 
community,  but  the  members  of  it  had  belonged  to  many — to  the 
Church,  the  Baptists,  the  Independents,  the  Methodists.  They 
were  mostly  mill-hands  or  small  tradesmen,  penetrated  on  the  one 
side  with  the  fervour,  the  yearnings,  the  strong  formless  poetry 
of  English  evangelical  faith,  and  repelled  on  the  other  by  various 
features  in  the  different  sects  from  which  they  came — by  the 
hierarchical  strictness  of  the  Wesleyan  organisation,  or  the  loose- 
ness of  the  Congregationalists,  or  the  coldness  of  the  Church. 
They  had  come  together  to  seek  the  Lord  in  some  way  more 
intimate,  more  moving,  more  effectual  than  any  they  had  yet 
found  ;  and  in  this  pathetic  search  for  the  '  rainbow  gold '  of  faith 
they  were  perpetually  brought  up  against  the  old  stumbling-blocks 
of  the  unregenerate  man, — the  smallest  egotisms,  and  the  meanest 
vanities.  Mr.  Ancrum,  for  instance,  had  come  to  the  Clough 
End  '  Brethren '  full  of  an  indescribable  missionary  zeal.  He  had 
laboured  for  them  night  and  day,  taxing  his  sickly  frame  far 
beyond  its  powers.  But  the  most  sordid  conspiracy  imaginable, 
led  by  two  or  three  of  the  prominent  members  who  thought  he 
did  not  allow  them  enough  share  in  the  evening  meetings,  had 
finally  overthrown  him,  and  he  had  gone  back  to  Manchester  a 
bitterer  and  a  sadder  man. 

After  he  left  there  was  an  interregnum,  during  which  one  or 
two  of  the  elder  '  Brethren '  taught  Sunday  school  and  led  the 
Sunday  services.  But  at  last,  in  August,  it  became  known  in 
Clough  End  that  a  new  minister  for  the  '  Christian  Brethren '  had 
come  down,  and  public  curiosity  in  the  Dissenting  circles  was  keen 
about  him.  After  a  few  weeks  there  began  to  be  a  buzz  in  the 
little  town  on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Dyson.  The  '  Christian  Brethren ' 
meeting-room,  a  long  low  upper  chamber  formerly  occupied  by 
half  a  dozen  hand-looms,  was  crowded  on  Sundays,  morning  and 
evening,  not  only  by  the  Brethren,  but  by  migrants  from  other 
denominations,  and  the  Sunday  school,  which  was  held  in  a  little 


CHAP,  ix  CHILDHOOD  95 

rickety  garret  off  the  main  room,  also  received  a  large  increase  of 
members.  It  was  rumoured  that  Mr.  Dyson  was  specially 
successful  with  boys,  and  that  there  was  an  '  awakening '  among 
some  of  the  lowest  and  roughest  of  the  Clough  End  lads. 

'He  ha  sich  a  way  wi  un,'  said  a  much -stirred  mother  to 
Reuben  Grieve,  meeting  him  one  day  in  the  street,  '  he  do  seem 
to  melt  your  varra  marrow.' 

Reuben  went  to  hear  the  new  man,  was  much  moved,  and 
came  home  talking  about  him  with  a  stammering  unction,  and 
many  furtive  looks  at  David.  He  had  tried  to  remonstrate  several 
times  on  the  lad's  desertion  of  chapel  and  Sunday  school,  but  to 
no  purpose.  There  was  something  in  David's  half  contemptuous, 
half  obstinate  silence  on  these  occasions  which  for*  a  man  like 
Keuben  made  argument  impossible.  To  his  morbid  inner  sense 
the  boy  seemed  to  have  entered  irrevocably  on  the  broad  path 
which  leadeth  to  destruction.  Perhaps  in  another  year  he  would 
be  drinking  and  thieving.  With  a  curious  fatalism  Reuben  felt 
that  for  the  present,  and  till  he  had  made  some  tangible  amends 
to  Sandy  and  the  Unseen  Powers  for  Hannah's  sin,  he  himself 
could  do  nothing.  His  hands  were  unclean.  But  some  tremu- 
lous passing  hopes  he  allowed  himself  to  build  on  this  new 
prophet. 

Meanwhile,  David  heard  the  town-talk,  and  took  small  account 
of  it.  He  supposed  he  should  see  the  new  comer  at  Jerry's  in 
time.  Then  if  folk  spoke  true  there  would  be  a  shindy  worth 
joining  in.  Meanwhile,  the  pressure  of  his  own  affairs  made  the 
excitement  of  the  neighbourhood  seem  to  him  one  more  of  those 
storms  in  the  Dissenting  tea-cup,  of  which,  boy  as  he  was,  he  had 
known  a  good  many  already. 

One  September  evening  he  was  walking  down  to  Clough  End, 
bound  to  the  reading-room.  He  had  quite  ceased  to  attend  the 
'Crooked  Cow.'  His  pennies  were  precious  to  him  now,  and  he 
saved  them  jealously,  wondering  scornfully  sometimes  how  he 
could  ever  have  demeaned  himself  so  far  as  to  find  excitement  in 
the  liquor  or  the  company  of  the  '  Cow.'  Half-way  down  to  the 
town,  as  he  was  passing  the  foundry,  whence  he  had  drawn  the 
pan  which  had  for  so  long  made  the  smithy  enchanted  ground  to 
him,  the  big  slouching  appprentice  who  had  been  his  quondam 
friend  and  ally  there,  came  out  of  the  foundry  yard  just  in  front 
of  him.  David  quickened  up  a  little. 

'  Tom,  whar  are  yo  goin  ? ' 

The  other  looked  round  at  him  uneasily. 

'  Niver  yo  mind.' 

The  youth's  uncouth  clothes  were  carefully  brushed,  and  his 
fat  face,  which  wore  an  incongruous  expression  of  anxiety  and 
dejection,  shone  with  washing.  David  studied  him  a  moment  in 
silence,  then  he  said  abruptly — 

'  Yo're  goin  prayer-meetin,  that's  what  yo  are.' 

'An  if  I  am,  it's  noa  consarn  o'  yourn.  Yo're  yan  o'  th' 
unregenerate  ;  an  I'll  ask  yo,  Davy,  if  happen  yo're  goin  town 


96  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

way,  not  to  talk  ony  o'  your  carnal  talk  to  me.  I'se  got  hin- 
drances enough,  t'  Lord  knows.' 

And  the  lad  went  his  way,  morosely  hanging  his  head,  and 
stepping  more  rapidly  as  though  to  get  rid  of  his  companion. 

'  Well,  I  niver ! '  exclaimed  David,  in  his  astonishment. 
'What's  wrong  wi  yo,  Tom?  Yo've  got  no  more  spunk  nor  a 
moultin  hen.  What's  getten  hold  o'  yo  ? ' 

Tom  hesitated  a  moment.  '  TV  Lord  ! '  he  burst  out  at  last, 
looking  at  Davy  with  that  sudden  unconscious  dignity  which 
strong  feeling  can  bestow  for  the  moment  on  the  meanest  of 
mortals.  '  He's  a  harryin'  me  !  I  haven't  slep  this  three  neets  for 
shoutin  an  cryin !  It's  th'  conviction  o'  sin,  Davy.  Th'  devil 
seems  a  hoftdin  me,  an  I  conno  pull  away,  not  whativer.  T'  new 
minister  says,  ' '  Dunnot  yo  pull.  Let  Jesus  do 't  all.  He's  strang, 
He  is.  Yo're  nobbut  a  worm."  But  I've  naw  assurance,  Davy, 
theer's  whar  it  is — I've  naw  assurance  ! '  he  repeated,  forgetting 
in  his  pain  the  unregenerate  mind  of  his  companion. 

David  walked  on  beside  him  wondering.  When  he  had  last 
seen  Tom  he  was  lounging  in  a  half-drunken  condition  outside 
the  door  of  the  '  Crooked  Cow,'  cracking  tipsy  jokes  with  the 
passers-by. 

'  Where  is  the  prayer-meetin  ? '  he  inquired  presently. 

'  In  owd  Simes's  shed — an  it's  late  too — I  mun  hurry. ' 

'  Why,  theer'll  be  plenty  o'  room  in  old  Simes's  shed.  It's  a 
f earf  u  big  place. ' 

'An  lasst  time  theer  was  na  stannin  ground  for  a  corn- 
boggart  ;  an  I  wudna  miss  ony  o'  Mr.  Dyson's  pray  in,  not  for 
nothin.  Good  neet  to  yo,  Davy.' 

And  Tom  broke  into  a  run  ;  David,  however,  kept  up  with 
him. 

'  P'raps  I'll  coom  too,'  he  said,  with  a  kind  of  bravado,  when 
they  had  passed  the  bridge  and  the  Kinder  printing  works,  and 
Clough  End  was  in  sight. 

Tom  said  nothing  till  they  had  breasted  a  hill,  at  the  top  of 
which  he  paused  panting,  and  confronted  David. 

'  Noo  yo'll  not  mak  a  rumpus,  Davy,'  he  said  mistrustfully. 

'  An  if  I  do,  can't  a  hunderd  or  two  o'  yo  kick  me  out  ? '  asked 
David,  mockingly.  '  I'll  mak  no  rumpus.  P'raps  yor  Mr.  Dyson 
'11  convert  me.' 

And  he  walked  on  laughing. 

Tom  looked  darkly  at  him  ;  then,  as  he  recovered  his  wind, 
his  countenance  suddenly  cleared.  Satan  laid  a  new  snare  for 
him — poor  Tom!  —  and  into  his  tortured  heart  there  fell  a 
poisonous  drop  of  spiritual  pride.  Public  reprobation  applied  to 
a  certain  order  of  offences  makes  a  very  marketable  kind  of 
fame,  as  the  author  of  Manfred  knew  very  well.  David  in  his 
small  obscure  way  was  supplying  another  illustration  of  the 
principle.  For  the  past  year  he  had  been  something  of  a 
personage  in  Clough  End — having  always  his  wits,  his  book- 
learning,  his  looks,  and  his  singular  parentage  to  start  from. 


CHAP,  ix  CHILDHOOD  97 

Tom — the  shambling  butt  of  his  comrades — began  to  like  the 
notion  of  going  into  prayer-meeting  with  David  Grieve  in  tow ; 
and  even  that  bitter  and  very  real  cloud  of  spiritual  misery  lifted 
a  little. 

So  they  marched  in  together,  Tom  in  front,  with  his  head  much 
higher  than  before  ;  and  till  the  minister  began  there  were  many 
curious  glances  thrown  at  David.  It  was  a  prayer-meeting  for 
boys  only,  and  the  place  was  crammed  with  them,  of  all  ages  up 
to  eighteen. 

It  was  a  carpenter's  workshop.  Tools  and  timber  had  been  as 
far  as  possible  pushed  to  the  side,  and  at  the  end  a  rough  platform 
of  loose  planks  had  been  laid  across  some  logs  so  as  to  raise  the 
preacher  a  little. 

Soon  there  was  a  stir,  and  Mr.  Dyson  appeared.  He  was  tall 
and  loosely  built,  with  the  stoop  from  the  neck  and  the  sallow 
skin  which  the  position  of  the  cotton-spinner  at  work  and  the 
close  fluffy  atmosphere  in  which  he  lives  tend  to  develop.  Up  to 
six  months  ago,  he  had  been  a  mill-hand  and  a  Wesleyan  class- 
leader.  Now,  in  consequence  partly  of  some  inward  crisis,  partly 
of  revolt  against  an  '  unspiritual '  superintendent,  he  had  thrown 
up  mill  and  Methodism  together,  and  come  to  live  on  the  doles  of 
the  Christian  Brethren  at  Clough  End.  He  had  been  preaching 
on  the  moors  already  during  the  day,  and  was  tired  out ;  but  the 
pallor  of  the  harsh  face  only  made  the  bright,  commanding  eye 
more  noticeable.  It  ran  over  the  room,  took  note  first  of  the 
numbers,  then  of  individuals,  marked  who  had  been  there  before, 
who  was  a  new-comer.  The  audience  fell  into  order  and  quiet 
before  it  as  though  a  general  had  taken  command. 

He  put  his  hands  on  his  hips  and  began  to  speak  without  any 
preface,  somewhat  to  the  boys'  surprise,  who  had  expected  a 
prayer.  The  voice,  as  generally  happens  with  a  successful 
revivalist  preacher,  was  of  fine  quality,  and  rich  in  good  South 
Lancashire  intonations,  and  his  manner  was  simplicity  itself. 

'Suppose  we  put  off  our  prayer  a  little  bit,'  he  said,  in  a 
colloquial  tone,  his  fixed  look  studying  the  crowded  benches  all 
the  while.  '  Perhaps  we'll  have  more  to  pray  about  by-and-by. 
.  .  .  Well,  now,  I  haven't  been  long  in  Clough  End,  to  be  sure, 
but  I  think  I've  been  long  enough  to  get  some  notion  of  how  you 
boys  here  live — whether  you  work  on  the  land,  or  whether  you 
work  in  the  mills  or  in  shops — I've  been  watching  you  a  bit, 
perhaps  you  didn't  think  it ;  and  what  I'm  going  to  do  to-night  is 
to  take  your  lives  to  pieces — take  them  to  pieces,  an  look  close  into 
them,  as  you've  seen  them  do  at  the  mill,  perhaps,  with  a  machine 
that  wants  cleaning.  I  want  to  find  out  what's  wrong  wi  them, 
what  they're  good  for,  whose  work  they  do — God's  or  the  devil's, 
.  .  .  First  let  me  take  the  mill-hands.  Perhaps  I  know  most 
about  their  life,  for  I  went  to  work  in  a  cotton-mill  when  I  was 
eight  years  old,  and  I  only  left  it  six  months  ago.  I  have  seen 
men  and  women  saved  in  that  mill,  so  that  their  whole  life  after- 
wards was  a  kind  of  ecstasy  :  I  have  seen  others  lost  there,  so 


98  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

that  they  became  true  children  of  the  devil,  and  made  those  about 
them  as  vile  and  wretched  as  themselves.  I  have  seen  men  grow 
rich  there,  and  I  have  seen  men  die  there  ;  so  if  there  is  anything 
I  know  in  this  world  it  is  how  factory  workers  spend  their  time — 
at  least,  I  think  I  know.  But  judge  for  yourselves — shout  to  me 
if  I'm  wrong.  Isn't  it  somehow  like  this  ? ' 

And  he  fell  into  a  description  of  the  mill-hand's  working  day. 
It  was  done  with  knowledge,  sometimes  with  humour,  and  through 
it  all  ran  a  curious  undercurrent  of  half -ironical  passion.  The 
audience  enjoyed  it,  took  the  points,  broke  in  now  and  then  with 
comments  as  the  speaker  touched  on  such  burning  matters  as  the 
tyranny  of  overlookers,  the  temper  of  masters,  the  rubs  between 
the  different  classes  of  '  hands,'  the  behaviour  of  '  minders  '  to  the 
'  piecers '  employed  by  them,  and  so  on.  The  sermon  at  one  time 
was  more  like  a  dialogue  between  preacher  and  congregation. 
David  found  himself  joining  in  it  involuntarily  once  or  twice,  so 
stimulating  was  the  whole  atmospuere,  and  Mr.  Dyson's  eye  was 
caught  perforce  by  the  tall  dark  fellow  with  the  defiant  carriage 
of  the  head  who  sat  next  to  Tom  Mullins,  and  whom  he  did  not 
remember  to  have  seen  before. 

But  suddenly  the  preacher  stopped,  and  the  room  fell  dead 
silent,  startled  by  the  darkening  of  his  look.  '  Ay,'  he  said,  with 
stern  sharpness.  '  Ay,  that's  how  you  live — them's  the  things  you 
spend  your  time  and  your  minds  on.  You  laugh,  and  I  laugh — 
not  a  bad  sort  of  life,  you  think — a  good  deal  of  pleasure,  after 
all,  to  be  got  out  of  it.  If  a  man  must  work  he  might  do  worse. 
0  you  pooi'  souls  /' 

The  speaker  stopped,  as  though  mastering  himself.  His  face 
worked  with  emotion  ;  his  last  words  had  been  almost  a  cry  of 
pain.  After  the  easy  give  and  take  of  the  opening,  this  change 
was  electrical.  David  felt  his  hand  tremble  on  his  knee. 

'  Answer  me  this  ! '  cried  the  preacher,  his  nervous  cotton- 
spinner's  hand  outstretched.  '  Is  there  any  soul  here  among  you 
factory  lads  who,  when  he  wakes  in  the  morning,  ever  thinks  of 
saying  a  prayer  f  Not  one  of  you,  I'll  be  bound  1  What  with 
shovelling  on  one's  clothes,  and  gulping  down  one's  breakfast, 
and  walking  half  a  mile  to  the  mill,  who's  got  time  to  think  about 
prayers  ?  God  must  wait.  He's  always  there  above,  you  think, 
sitting  in  glory.  He  can  listen  any  time.  Well,  as  you  stand  at 
your  work — all  those  hours  ! — is  there  ever  a  moment  then  for 
putting  up  a  word  in  Jesus'  ear — Jesus,  Who  died  for  sinners  ? 
Why,  no,  how  should  there  be  indeed?  If  you  don't  keep  a 
sharp  eye  on  your  work  the  overlooker  'ull  know  the  reason 
why  in  double-quick  time  I  ...  But  there  comes  a  break, 
perhaps,  for  one  reason  or  another.  Does  the  Lord  get  it  ?  What 
a  thing  to  ask,  to  be  sure  !  Why,  there  are  other  spinners  close 
by,  waiting  for  rovings,  or  leaving  off  for  "  baggin,"  and  a  bit  of 
talk  and  a  bad  word  or  two  are  a  deal  more  fun,  and  come  easier 
than  praying.  Half-past  five  o'clock  at  last — knocking-off  time. 
Then  you  begin  to  think  of  amusing  yourselves.  There's  loafing 


CHAP,  ix  CHILDHOOD  99 

about  the  streets,  -which  never  comes  amiss,  and  there's  smoking 
and  the  public  for  you  bigger  ones,  and  there's  betting  on  Man- 
chester races,  and  there's  a  bout  of  swearing  every  now  and  then 
to  keep  up  your  spirits,  and  there  are  other  thoughts,  and  perhaps 
actions,  for  some  of  you,  of  which  the  less  said  in  any  decent 
Christian  gathering  the  better  !  And  so  bedtime  comes  round 
again  ;  still  not  a  moment  to  think  of  God  in — of  the  Judgment 
which  has  come  a  day  closer — of  your  sins  which  have  grown  a 
day  heavier — of  your  soul  which  has  sunk  a  day  further  from 
heaven,  a  day  nearer  to  hell  ?  Not  one.  You  are  dead  tired, 
and  mill-work  begins  so  early.  Tumble  in — God  can  wait.  He 
has  waited  fourteen,  or  eighteen,  or  twenty  years  already  ! 

'  But  you're  not  all  factory  hands  here.  I  see  a  good  many 
lads  I  know  come  from  the  country — from  the  farms  up  Kinder  or 
Edale  way.  Weil,  I  don't  know  so  much  about  your  ways  as  I  do 
about  mills ;  but  I  know  some,  and  I  can  guess  some.  You  are 
not  shut  up  all  day  with  the  roar  of  the  machines  in  your  ears, 
and  the  cotton-fluff  choking  your  lungs.  You  have  to  live  harder, 
perhaps.  You've  less  chances  of  getting  on  in  the  world  ;  but  I 
declare  to  you,  if  you're  bad  and  godless — as  some  of  you  are — I 
think  there's  a  precious  sight  less  excuse  for  you  than  there  is  for 
the  mill-hands  ! ' 

And  with  a  startling  vehemence,  greater  by  far  than  he  had 
shown  in  the  case  of  the  mill-workers,  he  threw  himself  on  the 
vices  and  the  callousness  of  the  field-labourers.  For  were  they 
not,  day  by  day,  and  hour  by  hour,  face  to  face  with  the 
Almighty  in  His  mai'vellous  world — with  the  rising  of  His  sun, 
with  the  flash  of  His  lightning,  with  His  clouds  which  dropped 
fatness,  and  with  the  heavens  which  declare  His  glory  ?  Nothing 
between  them  and  the  Most  High,  if  they  would  open  their  dull 
eyes  and  see  !  And  more  than  that.  Not  a  bit  of  their  life,  but 
had  been  dear  to  the  Lord  Jesus — but  He  had  spoken  of  it,  taught 
from  it,  made  it  sacred.  The  shepherd  herding  the  sheep — how 
could  he,  of  all  men,  forget  and  blaspheme  the  Good  Shepherd  ? 
The  sower  scattering  the  seed — how  could  he,  of  all  men,  forget 
and  blaspheme  the  Heavenly  Sower  ?  Oh,  the  crookedness  of  sin  ! 
Oh,  the  hardness  of  men's  hearts  ! 

The  secret  of  the  denunciations  which  followed  lay  hidden 
deep  in  the  speaker's  personal  history.  They  were  the  utterances 
of  a  man  who  had  stood  for  years  at  the  '  mules,'  catching,  when 
he  could,  through  the  coarse  panes  of  factory  glass,  the  dim  blue 
outlines  of  distant  moors.  Here  were  noise,  crowd,  coarse  jesting, 
mean  tyrannies,  uncongenial  company — everything  which  a  ner- 
vous, excitable  nature,  tuned  to  poetry  in  the  English  way 
through  religion,  most  loathed  ;  there  was  beauty,  peace,  leisure 
for  thought,  for  holiness,  for  emotion. 

Meanwhile  the  mind  of  David  Grieve  rose  once  or  twice  in 
angry  protest.  It  was  not  fair — it  was  unjust — and  why  did  Mr. 
Dyson  always  seem  to  be  looking  at  him  ? — flinging  at  him  all 
these  scathing  words  about  farming  people's  sins  and  follies  ?  He 


100  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

was  shaken  and  excited.  Oratory,  of  any  sort,  never  failed  to 
stir  him  extraordinarily.  Once  even  he  would  have  jumped  up  to 
speak,  but  Tom  Mullins's  watchful  hand  closed  on  his  arm.  Davy 
shook  it  off  angrily,  but  was  perforce  reminded  of  his  promise. 
And  Mr.  Dyson  was  swift  in  all  things.  The  pitiless  sentences 
dropped ;  the  speaker,  exhausted,  wiped  his  brow  and  pondered 
a  moment ;  and  the  lads  from  the  farms  about,  most  of  whom 
David  knew  by  sight,  were  left  staring  at  the  floor,  some  inclined 
to  laugh  by  reaction,  others  crimson  and  miserable. 

"Well ;  so  God  was  everywhere  forgotten — in  the  fields  and  in 
the  mill.  The  greedy,  vicious  hours  went  by,  and  God  still  waited 
— waited.  Would  he  wait  for  ever  ? 

'Nayl' 

The  intense,  low-spoken  word  sent  a  shiver  through  the  room. 
The  revivalist  passion  had  been  mounting  rapidly  amongst  the 
listeners,  and  the  revivalist  sense  divined  what  was  coming.  To 
his  dying  day  David,  at  least,  never  forgot  the  picture  of  a 
sinner's  death  agony,  a  sinner's  doom,  which  followed.  As  to  the 
first,  it  was  very  quiet  and  colloquial.  The  preacher  dwelt  on  the 
tortured  body,  the  choking  breath,  the  failing  sight,  the  talk  ot 
relations  and  friends  round  the  bed. 

'"Ay,  poor  fellow,  he'll  not  lasst  mich  longer;  t'  doctor's 
gien  him  up — and  a  good  thing  too,  for  his  sufferins  are  terr'ble 
to  see." 

'  And  your  poor  dying  ears  will  catch  what  they  say.  Then 
will  your  fear  come  upon  you  as  a  storm,  and  your  calamity  as  a 
whirlwind.  Such  a  fear  ! 

'  Once,  my  lads — long  ago — I  saw  a  poor  girl  caught  by  her 
hair  in  one  of  the  roving  machines  in  the  mill  I  used  to  work  at. 
Three  minutes  afterwards  they  tore  away  her  body  from  the  iron 
teeth  which  had  destroyed  her.  But  I,  a  lad  of  twelve,  had  seen 
her  face  just  as  the  thing  caught  her,  and  if  I  live  to  be  a  hun- 
dred I  shall  never  forget  that  face — that  horrible,  horrible  fear 
convulsing  it. 

'  But  that  fear,  my  boys,  was  as  nothing  to  the  sinner's  fear 
at  death  !  Only  a  few  more  hours — a  few  more  minutes,  perhaps 
— and  then  judgment !  All  the  pleasant  loafing  and  lounging, 
all  the  eating  and  drinking,  the  betting  and  swearing,  the  warm 
sun,  the  kind  light,  the  indulgent  parents  and  friends  left  behind  ; 
nothing  for  ever  and  ever  but  the  torments  which  belong  to  sin, 
and  which  even  the  living  God  can  no  more  spare  you  and  me  if 
we  die  in  sin  than  the  mill-engine,  once  set  going,  can  spare  the 
poor  creature  that  meddles  with  it, 

'  Well ;  but  perhaps  in  that  awful  last  hour  you  try  to  pray — 
to  call  on  the  Saviour.  But,  alas  !  alas  !  prayer  and  faith  have  to 
be  learnt,  like  cotton-spinning.  Let  no  man  count  on  learning 
that  lesson  for  the  asking.  While  your  body  has  been  enjoying 
itself  in  sin,  your  soul  has  been  dying — dying  ;  and  when  at  the 
last  you  bid  it  rise  and  go  to  the  Father,  you  will  find  it  just  as 
helpless  as  your  poor  paralysed  limbs.  It  cannot  rise,  it  has  no 


CHAP,  ix  CHILDHOOD  101 

strength  ;  it  cannot  go,  for  it  knows  not  the  way.  No  hope  ;  no 
hope.  Down  it  sinks,  and  the  black  waters  of  hell  close  upon  it 
for  ever  ! ' 

Then  followed  a  sort  of  vision  of  the  lost — delivered  in  short 
abrupt  sentences — the  form  of  the  speaker  drawn  rigidly  up 
meanwhile  to  its  full  height,  the  long  arm  outstretched.  The 
utterance  had  very  little  of  the  lurid  materialism,  the  grotesque 
horror  of  the  ordinary  ranter's  hell.  But  it  stole  upon  the  imagi- 
nation little  by  little,  and  possessed  it  at  last  with  an  all-pervad- 
ing terror.  Into  it,  to  begin  with,  had  gone  the  whole  life-blood 
and  passion  of  an  agonised  soul.  The  man  speaking  had  himself 
graven  the  terrors  of  it  on  his  inmost  nature  through  many  a 
week  of  demoniacal  possession.  But  since  that  original  experi- 
ence of  fire  which  gave  it  birth,  there  had  come  to  its  elaboration 
»  strange  artistic  instinct.  Day  after  day  the  preacher  had 
repeated  it  to  hushed  congregations,  and  with  every  repetition, 
almost,  there  had  come  a  greater  sharpening  of  the  light  and 
shade,  a  keener  sense  of  what  would  tell  and  move.  He  had 
given  it  on  the  moors  that  afternoon,  but  he  gave  it  better  to- 
night, for  on  the  wild  walk  across  the  plateau  of  the  Peak  some 
fresh  illustrations,  drawn  from  its  black  and  fissured  solitude,  had 
suggested  themselves,  and  he  worked  them  out  as  he  went,  with 
a  kind  of  joy,  watching  their  effect.  Yet  the  man  was,  in  his  way, 
a  saint,  and  altogether  sincere — so  subtle  a  thing  is  the  lif  e  of  the 
spirit. 

In  the  middle,  Tom  Mullins,  David's  apprentice-friend,  sud- 
denly broke  out  into  loud  groans,  rocking  himself  to  and  fro  on 
the  form.  A  little  later,  a  small  fair-haired  boy  of  twelve  sprang 
up  from  the  form  where  he  had  been  sitting  trembling,  and 
rushed  into  the  space  between  the  benches  and  the  preacher, 
quite  unconscious  of  what  he  was  doing. 

'  Sir  ! '  he  said  ;  '  oh,  sir  ! — please — I  didn't  want  to  say  them 
bad  words  this  mornin  ;  I  didn't,  sir  ;  it  wor  t'  big  uns  made  me  ; 
they  said  they'd  duck  me — an  it  do  hurt  that  bad.  Oh,  sir, 
please ! ' 

And  the  little  fellow  stood  wringing  his  hands,  the  tears  cours- 
ing down  his  cheeks. 

The  minister  stopped,  frowning,  and  looked  at  him.  Then  a 
smile  broke  on  the  set  face,  he  stepped  up  to  the  lad,  threw  his 
arm  round  him,  and  drew  him  up  to  his  side  fronting  the  room. 

'  My  boy,'  he  said,  looking  down  at  him  tenderly,  'you  and  I, 
thank  God,  are  still  in  the  land  of  the  living  ;  there  is  still  time 
to-night — this  very  minute — to  be  saved  !  Ay,  saved,  for  ever 
and  ever,  by  the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  Look  away  from  yourselves 
— away  from  sin — away  from  hell — to  the  blessed  Lord,  that 
suffered  and  died  and  rose  again  ;  just  for  what  ?  For  this  only 
— that  He  might,  with  His  own  pierced  hands,  draw  every  soul 
here  to-night,  and  every  soul  in  the  wide  world  that  will  but  hear 
His  voice,  out  of  the  clutches  of  the  devil,  and  out  of  the  pains  of 
hell,  and  gather  it  close  and  safe  into  His  everlasting  arms  ! ' 


102  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

There  was  a  great  sob  from  the  whole  room.  Eough  lads 
from  the  upland  farms,  shop-boys,  mill-hands,  strained  forward, 
listening,  thirsting,  responding  to  every  word. 

Redemption — Salvation — the  deliverance  of  the  soul  from 
itself — thither  all  religion  comes  at  last,  whether  for  the  ranter 
or  the  philosopher.  To  the  enriching  of  that  conception,  to  the 
gradual  hewing  it  out  in  historical  shape,  have  gone  the  noblest 
poetry,  the  purest  passion,  the  intensest  spiritual  vision  of  the 
highest  races,  since  the  human  mind  began  to  work.  And  the 
historical  shape  may  crumble ;  but  the  need  will  last  and  the 
travail  will  go  on  ;  for  man's  quest  of  redemption  is  but  the 
eternal  yielding  of  the  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter,  the  eternal 
answer  of  the  creature  to  the  urging  indwelling  Creator. 


CHAPTER  X 

an  hour  later,  after  the  stormy  praying  and  singing  which 
had  succeeded  Mr.  Dyson's  address,  David  found  himself  tramp- 
ing up  the  rough  and  lonely  road  leading  to  the  high  Kinder 
valley.  The  lights  of  Clough  End  had  disappeared  ;  against  the 
night  sky  the  dark  woody  side  of  Mardale  Moor  was  still  visible  ; 
beneath  it  sang  the  river  ;  a  few  stars  were  to  be  seen  ;  and  every 
now  and  then  the  windows  of  a  farm  shone  out  to  guide  the 
wayfarer.  But  David  stumbled  on,  noticing  nothing.  At  the 
foot  of  the  steep  hill  leading  to  the  farm  he  stopped  a  moment, 
and  leant  over  the  gate.  The  little  lad's  cry  was  in  his  ears. 

Presently  he  leapt  the  gate  impatiently,  and  ran  up  whistling. 
Supper  was  over,  but  Hannah  ungraciously  brought  him  out  some 
cold  bacon  and  bread.  Louie  hung  about  him  while  he  ate, 
studying  him  with  quick  furtive  eyes. 

'  Whar  yo  bin  ? '  she  said  abruptly,  when  Hannah  had  gone  to 
the  back  kitchen  for  a  moment.  Reuben  was  dozing  by  the  fire 
over  the  local  paper. 

'Nowhere  as  concerns  yo,'  said  David,  shortly.  He  finished 
his  supper  and  went  and  sat  on  the  steps.  The  dogs  came  and 
put  their  noses  on  his  knees.  He  pulled  absently  at  their  coats, 
looking  straight  before  him  at  the  dark  point  of  Kinder  Low. 

'  Whar  yo  bin  ? '  said  Louie's  voice  again  in  his  ear.  She  had 
squatted  down  on  the  step  behind  him. 

'Be  off  wi  yer,'  said  David,  angrily,  getting  up  in  order  to 
escape  her. 

But  she  pursued  him  across  the  farmyard. 

'  Have  yo  got  a  letter  ? ' 

'No,  I  haven't.' 

'  Did  yo  ask  at  t'  post-office  ? ' 

'No,  I  didn't,' 

'  An  why  didn't  yo  ? ' 

'Because  I  didn't  want — soa   there — get  away.'      And   he 


CHAP,  x  CHILDHOOD  103 

stalked  off.  Louie,  left  behind,  chewed  the  cud  of  reflection  in 
the  darkness. 

Presently,  to  his  great  disgust,  as  he  was  sitting  under  a  wall 
of  one  of  the  pasture-fields,  hidden,  as  he  conceived,  from  all  the 
world  by  the  night,  he  heard  the  rustle  of  a  dress,  the  click  of  a 
stone,  and  there  was  Louie  dangling  her  legs  above  him,  having 
attacked  him  in  the  rear. 

'  Uncle  Reuben's  talkin  'is  stuff  about  Mr.  Dyson.  I  seed  'im 
gooin  passt  Wigsons'  this  afternoon.  He's  nowt — he's  common, 
he  is. ' 

The  thin  scornful  voice  out  of  the  dark  grated  on  him  intoler- 
ably. He  bent  forward  and  shut  his  ears  tight  with  both  his 
hands.  To  judge  from  the  muffled  sounds  he  heard,  Louie  went 
on  talking  for  a  while  ;  but  at  last  there  had  been  silence  for  so 
long,  that  he  took  his  hands  away,  thinking  she  must  have  gone. 

'Yo've  been  at  t'  prayer-meetin,  I  tell  yo,  an  yo're  a  great 
stupid  muffin-yed,  soa  theer.' 

And  a  peremptory  little  kick  on  his  shoulder  from  a  substan- 
tial shoe  gave  the  words  point. 

He  sprang  up  in  a  rage,  ran  down  the  hill,  jumped  over  a 
wall  or  two,  and  got  rid  of  her.  But  he  seemed  to  hear  her 
elfish  laugh  for  some  time  after.  As  for  himself,  he  could  not 
analyse  what  had  come  over  him.  But  not  even  the  attraction 
of  an  unopened  parcel  of  books  he  had  carried  home  that  after- 
noon from  Clough  End — a  loan  from  a  young  stationer  he  had 
lately  made  acquaintance  with — could  draw  him  back  to  the 
farm.  He  sat  on  and  on  in  the  dark.  And  when  at  last,  roused 
by  the  distant  sounds  of  shutting  up  the  house,  he  slunk  in  and 
up  to  bed,  he  tossed  about  for  a  long  time,  and  woke  up  often  in 
the  night.  The  tyrannous  power  of  another  man's  faith  was 
upon  him.  He  could  not  get  Mr.  Dyson  out  of  his  head.  How 
on  earth  could  anybody  be  so  certain  ?  It  was  monstrous  that 
any  one  should  be.  It  was  canting  stuff. 

Still,  next  day,  hearing  by  chance  that  the  new  comer  was 
going  to  preach  at  a  hamlet  the  other  side  of  Clough  End,  he 
went,  found  a  large  mixed  meeting  mostly  of  mill-hands,  and  the 
tide  of  Revivalism  rolling  high.  This  time  Mr.  Dyson  picked  him 
out  at  once — the  face  and  head  indeed  were  easily  remembered. 
After  the  sermon,  when  the  congregation  were  filing  out,  leaving 
behind  those  more  particularly  distressed  in  mind  to  be  dealt 
with  more  intimately  in  a  small  prayer-meeting  by  Mr.  Dyson 
and  a  prayer-leader,  the  minister  suddenly  stepped  aside  from  a 
group  of  people  he  was  talking  with,  and  touched  David  on  the 
arm  as  he  was  making  for  the  door. 

'  Won't  you  stay  ? '  he  said  peremptorily.  '  Don't  trifle  with 
the  Lord.' 

And  his  feverish  divining  eyes  seemed  to  look  the  boy  through 
and  through.  David  flushed,  and  pushed  past  him  with  some 
inarticulate  answer.  "When  he  found  himself  in  the  open  air  he 
was  half  angry,  half  shaken  with  emotion.  And  afterwards  a 


104  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

curious  instinct,  the  sullen  instinct  of  the  wild  creature  shrinking 
from  a  possible  captor,  made  him  keep  himself  as  much  as 
possible  out  of  Mr.  Dyson's  way.  At  the  prayer-meetings  and 
addresses,  which  followed  each  other  during  the  next  fortnight  in 
quick  succession,  David  was  almost  always  present  ^but  he  stood 
at  the  back,  and  as  soon  as  the  general  function  was  over  he  fled. 
The  preacher's  strong  will  was  piqued.  He  began  to  covet  the 
boy's  submission  disproportionately,  and  laid  schemes  for  meet- 
ing with  him.  But  David  evaded  them  all. 

Other  persons,  however,  succeeded  better.  Whenever  the 
revivalist  fever  attacks  a  community,  it  excites  in  a  certain  num- 
ber of  individuals,  especially  women,  an  indescribable  zeal  for 
proselytising.  The  signs  of  '  conviction '  in  any  hitherto  unre- 
generate  soul  are  marked  at  once,  and  the  '  saved '  make  a  prey 
of  it,  showing  a  marvellous  cunning  and  persistence  in  its  pursuit. 

One  day  a  woman,  the  wife  of  a  Clough  End  shoemaker, 
slightly  known  to  David,  met  him  on  the  moors. 

'  Will  yo  coom  to-night  ?'  she  said,  nodding  to  him.  '  Theer'll 
be  prayin'  at  our  house — about  half  a  dozen. ' 

Then,  as  the  boy  stopped,  amazed  and  hesitating,  she  fixed 
him  with  her  shining  ecstatic  eyes. 

'Awake,  thou  that  sleepest,'  she  said  under  her  breath,  'and 
Christ  shall  give  thee  light.' 

She  had  been  carrying  a  bundle  to  a  distant  farm.  A  child 
was  in  her  arms,  and  she  looked  dragged  and  worn.  But  all  the 
way  down  the  moor  as  she  came  towards  him  David  had  heard 
her  singing  hymns. 

He  hung  his  head  and  passed  on.  But  in  the  evening  he 
went,  found  three  or  four  other  boys  his  own  age  or  older,  the 
woman,  and  her  husband.  The  woman  sang  some  of  the  most 
passionate  Methodist  hymns  ;  the  husband,  a  young  shoemaker, 
already  half  dead  of  asthma  and  bronchitis,  told  his  '  experi- 
ences '  in  a  voice  broken  by  incessant  coughing  ;  one  of  the  boys, 
a  rough  specimen,  known  to  David  as  a  van-boy  from  some  calico- 
printing  works  in  the  neighbourhood,  prayed  aloud,  breaking  down 
into  sobs  in  the  middle ;  and  David,  at  first  obstinately  silent, 
found  himself  joining  before  the  end  in  the  groans  and  '  Amens,' 
by  force  of  a  contagious  excitement  he  half  despised  but  could 
not  withstand. 

The  little  prayer-meeting,  however,  broke  up  somewhat  in 
confusion.  There  was  not  much  real  difference  of  opinion  at  this 
time  in  Clough  End,  which  was,  on  the  whole,  a  strongly  reli- 
gious town.  Even  the  Churchmanship  of  it  was  decidedly  evan- 
gelical, ready  at  any  moment  to  make  common  cause  with  Dissent 
against  Ritualism,  if  such  a  calamity  should  ever  threaten  the 
little  community,  and  very  ready  to  join,  more  or  less  furtively, 
in  the  excitements  of  Dissenting  revivals.  Jerry  Timmins  and 
his  set  represented  the  only  serious  blot  on  what  the  pious 
Clough  Endian  might  reasonably  regard  as  a  fair  picture.  But 
this  set  contained  some  sharp  fellows — provided  outlet  for  a  con- 


CHAP,  x  CHILDHOOD  105 

siderable  amount  of  energy  of  a  raw  and  roving  sort,  and,  no 
doubt,  did  more  to  maintain  the  mental  equilibrium  of  the  small 
factory -town  than  any  enthusiast  on  the  other  side  would  for  a 
moment  have  allowed.  The  excitement  which  followed  in  the 
train  of  a  man  like  Mr.  Dyson  roused,  of  course,  an  answering 
hubbub  among  the  Timminsites.  The  whole  of  Jerry's  circle  was 
stirred  up,  in  fact,  like  a  hive  of  wasps  ;  their  ribaldry  grew  with 
what  it  fed  on ;  and  every  day  some  new  and  exquisite  method 
of  harrying  the  devout  occurred  to  the  more  ingenious  among 
them. 

David  had  hitherto  escaped  notice.  But  on  this  evening,  while 
he  and  his  half-dozen  companions  were  still  on  their  knees,  they 
were  first  disturbed  by  loud  drummings  on  the  shoemaker's 
door,  which  opened  directly  into  the  little  room  where  they  were 
congregated  ;  and  then,  when  they  emerged  into  the  street,  they 
found  a  mock  prayer-meeting  going  on  outside,  with  all  the  usual 
'  manifestations '  of  revivalist  fervour — sighs,  groans,  shouts,  and 
the  rest  of  it — in  full  flow.  At  the  sight  of  David  Grieve  there 
were  first  stares  and  then  shrieks  of  laughter. 

'  I  say,  Davy,'  cried  a  drunken  young  weaver,  sidling  up  to 
him  on  his  knees  and  embracing  him  from  behind,  '  my  heart's 
real  touched.  Gie  me  yor  coat,  Davy ;  it's  better  nor  mine, 
Davy  ;  and  I'm  yor  Christian  brother,  Davy.' 

The  emotion  of  this  appeal  drew  uproarious  merriment  from 
the  knot  of  Secularists.  David,  in  a  frenzy,  kicked  out,  so  that  his 
assailant  dropped  him  with  a  howl.  The  weaver's  friends  closed 
upon  the  '  Banters,'  who  had  to  fight  their  way  through.  It  was  not 
till  they  had  gained  the  outskirts  of  the  town  that  the  shower  of 
stones  ceased,  and  that  they  could  pause  to  take  stock  of  their 
losses.  Then  it  appeared  that,  though  all  were  bruised,  torn,  and 
furious,  some  were  inclined  to  take  a  mystical  joy  in  persecution, 
and  to  find  compensation  in  certain  plain  and  definite  predictions 
as  to  the  eternal  fate  in  store  for  '  Jerry  Timmins's  divils. '  David, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  much  more  inclined  to  vent  his  wrath  on 
his  own  side  than  on  the  Timminsites. 

'Why  can't  yo  keep  what  yo're  doin  to  yorsels?'  he  called 
out  fiercely  to  the  knot  of  panting  boys,  as  he  faced  round  upon 
them  at  the  gate  leading  to  the  Kinder  road.  '  Yo're  a  parcel  o' 
fools — always  chatterin  and  clatterin.' 

The  others  defended  themselves  warmly.  'Them  Timmins 
lot'  were  always  spying  about.  They  daren't  attack  the  large 
meetings,  but  they  had  a  diabolical  way  of  scenting  out  the  small 
ones.  The  meetings  at  the  shoemaker's  had  been  undisturbed  for 
some  few  nights,  then  a  Timminsite  passing  by  had  heard  hymns, 
probably  listened  at  the  keyhole,  and  of  course  informed  the  main 
body  of  the  enemy. 

'They're  like  them  nassty  earwigs,'  said  one  boy  in  disgust, 
'  they'll  wriggle  in  onywheres.' 

'  Howd  yor  noise  ! '  said  David,  peremptorily.  '  If  yo  wanted 
to  keep  out  o'  their  way,  yo  could  do  't  f asst  enough. ' 


106  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

'  How  ! '  they  inquired,  with  equal  curtness. 

'  Yo  needn't  meet  in  th'  town  at  aw.  Theer's  plenty  o'  places 
up  on  t'  moor,'  and  he  waved  his  hand  towards  the  hills  behind 
him,  lying  clear  in  the  autumn  moonlight.  'Theer's  th'  owd 
smithy — who'd  find  yo  there  ? ' 

The  mention  of  the  smithy  was  received  as  an  inspiration. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  pure  romantic  temper  roused  by  these 
revivalistic  outbreaks  in  provincial  England.  The  idea  of  the 
moors  and  the  old  ruin  as  setting  for  a  secret  prayer-meeting 
struck  the  group  of  excited  lads  as  singularly  attractive.  They 
parted  cheerfully  upon  it,  in  spite  of  their  bruises. 

David,  however,  walked  home  fuming.  The  self-abandonment 
of  the  revival  had  been  all  along  wellnigh  intolerable  to  him — 
and  now,  that  he  should  have  allowed  the  Timminsites  to  know 
anything  about  his  prayers  !  He  very  nearly  broke  off  from  it 
altogether  in  his  proud  disgust. 

However  he  did  ultimately  nothing  of  the  sort.  As  soon  as 
he  grew  cool  again,  he  was  as  much  tormented  as  before  by 
what  was  at  bottom  more  an  intellectual  curiosity  than  a  moral 
anguish.  There  was  some  moral  awakening  in  it ;  he  had  some 
real  qualms  about  sin,  some  real  aspirations  after  holiness,  and, 
so  far,  the  self -consciousness  which  had  first  stirred  at  Haworth 
was  deepened  and  fertilised.  But  the  thirst  for  emotion  and  sen- 
sation was  the  main  force  at  work.  He  could  not  make  out  what 
these  religious  people  meant  by  their  'experiences,'  and  for  the 
first  time  he  wanted  to  make  out.  So  when  it  was  proposed  to 
him  to  meet  at  the  smithy  on  a  certain  Saturday  evening,  he 
agreed. 

Meanwhile,  Louie  was  sitting  up  in  bed  every  night,  with  her 
hands  round  her  sharp  knees,  and  her  black  brows  knit  over 
David's  follies.  It  seemed  to  her  he  no  longer  cared  '  a  haporth ' 
about  getting  a  letter  from  Mr.  Ancrum,  about  going  to  Manches- 
ter, about  all  those  entrancing  anti-meat  schemes  which  were  to 
lead  so  easily  to  a  paradise  of  free  '  buying '  for  both  of  them. 
Whenever  she  tried  to  call  him  back  to  these  things  he  shook  her 
off  impatiently,  and  their  new-born  congeniality  to  each  other 
had  been  all  swamped  in  this  craze  for  '  shoutin  hollerin '  people 
she  despised  with  all  her  heart.  When  she  flew  out  at  him,  he 
just  avoided  her.  Indeed,  he  avoided  her  now  at  all  times, 
whether  she  flew  out  or  not.  There  was  an  invincible  heathenism 
about  Louie,  which  made  her  the  natural  enemy  of  any '  awakened ' 
person. 

The  relation  of  the  elders  in  the  farm  to  the  new  development 
in  David  was  a  curious  one.  Hannah  viewed  it  with  a  secret 
satisfaction.  Christians  have  less  time  than  other  people — such, 
at  least,  had  been  her  experience  with  Reuben — to  spend  in 
thirsting  for  the  goods  of  this  world.  The  more  David  went  to 
prayer-meetings,  the  less  likely  was  he  to  make  inadmissible 
demands  on  what  belonged  to  him.  As  for  poor  Reuben,  he 
seemed  to  have  got  his  wish ;  while  he  and  Hannah  had  been 


CHAP,  x  CHILDHOOD  107 

doing  their  best  to  drive  Sandy's  son  to  perdition  through  a 
downward  course  of  '  loafing,'  God  had  sent  Mr.  Dyson  to  put 
Davy  back  on  the  right  road.  But  he  was  ill  at  ease  ;  he  watched 
the  excitement,  which  all  the  lad's  prickly  reticence  could  not 
hide  from  those  about  him,  with  strange  and  variable  feelings. 
As  a  Christian,  he  should  have  rejoiced  ;  instead,  the  uncle  and 
nephew  shunned  each  other  more  than  ever,  and  shunned 
especially  all  talk  of  the  revival.  Perhaps  the  whole  situation — 
the  influence  of  the  new  man,  of  the  local  talk,  of  the  quickened 
spiritual  life  around  him,  did  but  aggravate  the  inner  strain  in 
Reuben.  Perhaps  his  wife's  satisfaction,  which  his  sharpened 
conscience  perceived  and  understood,  troubled  him  intolerably. 
At  any  rate,  his  silence  and  disquiet  grew,  and  his  only  pleasure 
lay,  more  than  ever,  in  those  solitary  cogitations  we  have  already 
spoken  of. 

The  15th  of  October  approached — as  it  happened,  the  Friday 
before  the  smithy  prayer-meeting.  On  that  day  of  the  year, 
according  to  ancient  and  invariable  custom,  the  Yorkshire  stock 
— steers,  heifers,  young  horses — which  are  transferred  to  the 
Derbyshire  farms  on  the  15th  of  May,  are  driven  back  to  their 
Yorkshire  owners,  with  all  the  fatness  of  Derbyshire  pastures 
showing  on  their  sleek  sides.  Breeders  and  farmers  meet  again 
at  Woodhead,  just  within  the  Yorkshire  border.  The  animals  are 
handed  over  to  their  owners,  paid  for  at  so  much  a  head,  and  any 
preventible  damage  or  loss  occurring  among  them  is  reckoned 
against  the  farmer  returning  them,  according  to  certain  local 
rules. 

As  the  middle  of  the  month  came  nearer,  Keuben  began  to 
talk  despondently  to  Hannah  of  his  probable  gains  from  his 
Yorkshire  '  boarders. '  It  had  been  a  cold  wet  summer  ;  he  was 
'  feart '  the  owners  would  think  he  might  have  taken  more  care 
of  some  of  the  animals,  especially  of  the  young  horses,  and  he 
mentioned  certain  ailments  springing  from  damp  and  exposure 
for  which  he  might  be  held  responsible.  Hannah  grew  irritated 
and  anxious.  The  receipts  from  this  source  were  the  largest  they 
could  reckon  upon  in  the  year.  But  the  fields  on  which  the 
Yorkshire  animals  pastured  were  at  some  distance  from  the 
house  ;  this  department  of  the  farm  business  was  always  left 
wholly  to  Reuben  ;  and,  with  much  grumbling  and  scolding,  she 
took  his  word  for  it  as  to  the  probable  lowness  of  the  sum  he 
should  bring  back. 

David,  meanwhile,  was  sometimes  a  good  deal  puzzled  by 
Keuben 's  behaviour.  It  seemed  to  him  that  his  uncle  told  some 
queer  tales  at  home  about  their  summer  stock.  And  when  Reuben 
announced  his  intention  of  going  by  himself  to  Woodhead,  and 
leaving  David  at  home,  the  boy  was  still  more  astonished. 

However,  he  was  glad  enough  to  be  spared  the  tramp  with  a 
set  of  people  whose  ways  and  talk  were  more  and  more  uncongenial 
to  him  ;  and  after  his  uncle's  departure  he  lay  for  hours  hidden 
from  Louie  among  the  heather,  sometimes  arguing  out  imaginary 


108  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

arguments  with  Mr.  Dyson,  sometimes  going  through  passing 
thrills  of  emotion  and  fear.  What  was  meant,  he  wanted  to 
know,  by  '•the  sense  of  pardon'"!  Person  after  person  at  the 
prayer-meetings  he  had  been  frequenting  hu,d  spoken  of  attaining 
it  with  ecstasy,  or  of  being  still  shut  out  from  it  with  anguish. 
But  how,  after  all,  did  it  differ  from  pardoning  yourself  ?  You 
had  only,  it  seemed  to  him,  to  think  very  hard  that  you  were 
pardoned,  and  the  feeling  came.  How  could  anybody  tell  it  was 
more  than  that  ?  David  racked  his  brain  endlessly  over  the  same 
subject.  Who  could  be  sure  that  '  experience '  was  not  all  moon- 
shine ?  But  he  was  as  yet  much  too  touched  and  shaken  by  what 
he  had  been  going  through  to  draw  any  trenchant  conclusions. 
He  asked  the  question,  however,  and  therein  lay  the  great  differ- 
ence between  him  and  the  true  stuff  of  Methodism. 

Meanwhile,  in  his  excitement,  he,  for  the  first  time,  ceased  to 
go  to  the  Dawsons'  as  usual.  To  begin  with,  they  dropped  out 
of  a  mind  which  was  preoccupied  with  one  of  the  first  strong 
emotions  of  adolescence.  Then,  some  one  told  him  casually  that 
'Lias  was  more  ailing  than  usual,  and  that  Margaret  was  in  much 
trouble.  He  was  pricked  with  remorse,  but  just  because  Margaret 
would  be  sure  to  question  him,  a  raw  shyness  came  in  and  held 
him  back  from  the  effort  of  going. 

On  the  Saturday  evening  David,  having  ingeniously  given 
Louie  the  slip,  sped  across  the  fields  to  the  smithy.  It  was  past 
five  o'clock,  and  the  light  was  fading.  But  the  waning  gold  of 
the  sunset  as  he  jumped  the  wall  on  to  the  moor  made  the  whole 
autumnal  earth  about  him,  and  the  whole  side  of  the  Scout,  one 
splendour.  Such  browns  and  pinks  among  the  withering  ling  ; 
such  gleaming  greens  among  the  bilberry  leaf  ;  such  reds  among 
the  turning  ferns  ;  such  fiery  touches  on  the  mountain  ashes 
overhanging  the  Red  Brook  !  The  western  light  struck  in  great 
shafts  into  the  bosom  of  the  Scout ;  and  over  its  grand  encom- 
passing mass  hung  some  hovering  clouds  just  kindling  into  rosy 
flame.  As  the  boy  walked  along  he  saw  and  thrilled  to  the  beauty 
which  lay  spread  about  him.  His  mood  was  simple,  and  sweeter 
than  usual.  He  felt  a  passionate  need  of  expression,  of  emotion. 
There  was  a  true  disquiet,  a  genuine  disgust  with  self  at  the 
bottom  of  him,  and  God  seemed  more  than  imaginatively  near. 
Perhaps,  on  this  day  of  his  youth,  of  all  days,  he  was  closest  to 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

At  the  smithy  he  found  about  a  dozen  persons,  mostly  youths, 
just  come  out  from  the  two  or  three  mills  which  give  employment 
to  Clough  End,  and  one  rather  older  than  the  rest,  a  favourite 
prayer-leader  in  Sunday  meetings.  At  first,  everything  felt 
strange  ;  the  boys  eyed  one  another  ;  even  David  as  he  stepped 
in  among  them  had  a  momentary  reaction,  and  was  more  conscious 
of  the  presence  of  a  red-haired  fellow  there  with  whom  he  had 
fought  a  mighty  fight  on  the  Huddersfield  expedition,  than  of  any 
spiritual  needs. 


CHAP,  x  CHILDHOOD  109 

However,  the  prayer-leader  knew  his  work.  He  was  slow  and 
pompous  ;  his  tone  with  the  Almighty  might  easily  have  roused  a 
hostile  sense  of  humour  ;  but  Dissent  in  its  active  and  emotional 
forms  kills  the  sense  of  humour ;  and,  besides,  there  was  a  real, 
ungainly  power  in  the  man.  Every  phrase  of  his  opening  prayer 
was  hackneyed  ;  every  gesture  uncouth.  But  his  heart  was  in  it, 
and  religious  conviction  is  the  most  infectious  thing  in  the  world. 
He  warmed,  and  his  congregation  warmed  with  him.  The  wild 
scene,  too,  did  its  part — the  world  of  darkening  moors  spread  out 
before  them  ;  the  mountain  wall  behind  them  ;  the  October  wind 
sighing  round  the  ruined  walls  ;  the  lonely  unaccustomed  sounds 
of  birds  and  water.  When  he  ceased,  boy  after  boy  broke  out 
into  more  or  less  incoherent  praying.  Soon  in  the  dusk  they  could 
no  longer  see  each  other's  faces  ;  and  then  it  was  still  easier  to 
break  through  reserve. 

At  last  David  found  himself  speaking.  What  he  said  was  at 
first  almost  inaudible,  for  he  was  kneeling  between  the  wall  and 
the  pan  which  had  been  his  childish  joy,  with  his  face  and  arms 
crushed  against  the  stones.  But  when  he  began  the  boys  about 
pricked  up  their  ears,  and  David  was  conscious  suddenly  of  a 
deepened  silence.  There  were  warm  tears  on  his  hidden  cheeks  ; 
but  it  pleased  him  keenly  they  should  listen  so,  and  he  prayed 
more  audibly  and  freely.  Then,  when  his  voice  dropped  at  last, 
the  prayer-leader  gave  out  the  familiar  hymn,  '  Come,  O  thou 
Traveller  unknown  : ' — 

Come,  0  thou  Traveller  unknown, 
Whom  still  I  hold,  but  cannot  see  ! 

My  company  before  is  gone, 
And  I  am  left  alone  with  Thee  ; 

With  Thee  all  night  I  mean  to  stay, 

And  wrestle  till  the  break  of  day. 

Wilt  thou  not  yet  to  me  reveal 

Thy  new  unutterable  name '? 
Tell  me,  I  still  beseech  thee,  tell — 

To  know  it  now  resolved  I  am. 
Wrestling,  I  will  not  let  thee  go, 
Till  I  thy  name,  thy  nature  know. 
*  *  *  * 

'Tis  Love  !  'tis  Love — thou  lovest  me  ! 

I  hear  thy  whisper  in  my  heart ; 
The  morning  breaks,  the  shadows  flee, 

Pure  universal  Love  thou  art ; 
To  me,  to  all,  thy  mercies  move, 
Thy  nature  and  thy  name  is  Love. 

Again  and  again  the  lines  rose  on  the  autumn  air  ;  each  time 
the  hymn  came  to  an  end  it  was  started  afresh,  the  sound  of  it 
spreading  far  and  wide  into  the  purple  breast  of  Kinder  Scout. 
At  last  the  painful  sobbing  of  poor  Tom  Mullins  almost  drowned 


110  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

the  singing.  The  prayer-leader,  himself  much  moved,  bent  over 
and  seized  him  by  the  arm. 

'  Look  to  Jesus,  Tom.  Lay  hold  on  the  Saviour.  Don't  think 
of  your  sins  ;  they're  done  away  i'  th'  blood  o'  the  Lamb.  Howd 
Him  fast.  Say,  "  I  believe,"  and  the  Lord  ull  deliver  yo.' 

"With  a  cry,  the  great  hulking  lad  sprang  to  his  feet,  and 
clasped  his  arms  above  his  head — 

'  I  do  believe — I  will  believe.  Help  me,  Lord  Jesus.  Oh,  I'm 
saved  !  I'm  saved ! '  And  he  remained  standing  in  an  ecstasy, 
looking  to  the  sky  above  the  Scout,  where  the  red  sunset  glow 
still  lingered. 

'  Hallelujah  !  hallelujah  !  Thanks  be  to  God ! '  cried  the 
prayer-leader,  and  the  smithy  resounded  in  the  growing  darkness 
with  similar  shouts.  David  was  almost  choking  with  excitement. 
He  would  have  given  worlds  to  spring  to  Tom  Mullins's  side  and 
proclaim  the  same  faith.  But  the  inmost  heart  of  him,  his  real 
self,  seemed  to  him  at  this  testing  moment  something  dead  and 
cold.  No  heavenly  voice  spoke  to  him,  David  Grieve.  A  genuine 
pang  of  religious  despair  seized  him.  He  looked  out  over  the 
moor  through  a  gap  in  the  stones.  There  was  a  dim  path  below  ; 
the  fancy  struck  him  that  Christ,  the  '  Traveller  unknown,'  was 
passing  along  it.  He  had  already  stretched  out  His  hand  of 
blessing  to  Tom  Mullins. 

'  To  me !  to  me,  too  ! '  David  cried  under  his  breath,  carried 
away  by  the  haunting  imagination,  and  straining  his  eyes  into 
the  dusk.  Had  the  night  opened  to  his  sight  there  and  then  in  a 
vision  of  glory,  he  would  have  been  no  whit  surprised. 

Hark  ! — what  was  that  sound  ? 

A  weird  scream  rose  on  the  wind.  The  startled  congregation 
in  the  smithy  scrambled  to  their  feet.  Another  scream,  nearer 
apparently  than  the  first,  and  then  a  loud  wailing,  broken  every 
few  seconds  by  a  strange  slight  laugh,  of  which  the  distance 
seemed  quite  indefinite.  "Was  it  close  by,  or  beyond  the  Red 
Brook  ? 

The  prayer-leader  turned  white,  the  boys  stood  huddled  round 
him  in  every  attitude  of  terror.  Again  the  scream,  and  the  little 
ghostly  laugh  !  Looking  at  each  other  wildly,  the  whole  congre- 
gation broke  from  the  smithy  down  the  hill.  But  the  leader 
stopped  himself. 

'  It's  mebbe  soom  one  in  trouble,'  he  said  manfully,  every  limb 
trembling.  '  We  mun  go  and  see,  my  lads.'  And  he  rushed  off 
in  the  direction  whence  the  first  sound  had  seemed  to  come — 
towards  the  Red  Brook — half  a  dozen  of  the  bolder  spirits  follow- 
ing. The  rest  stood  cowering  on  the  slope  under  the  smithy. 
David  meanwhile  had  climbed  the  ruined  wall,  and  stood  with 
head  strained  forward,  his  eyes  sweeping  the  moor.  But  every 
outline  was  sinking  fast  into  the  gulf  of  the  night ;  only  a  few 
indistinct  masses — a  cluster  of  gorse-bushes,  a  clump  of  mountain 
ash — still  showed  here  and  there. 

The  leader  made  for  one  of  these  darker  patches  on  the 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  111 

mountain-side,  led  on  always  by  the  recurrent  screams.  He 
reached  it ;  it  was  a  patch  of  juniper  overhanging  the  Red  Brook 
— when  suddenly  from  behind  it  there  shot  up  a  white  thing, 
taller  than  the  tallest  man,  with  nodding  head  and  outspread 
arms,  and  such  laughter — so  faint,  so  shrill,  so  evil,  breaking 
midway  into  a  hoarse  angry  yell. 

'  Jenny  Crum!  Jenny  Crum!"1  cried  the  whole  band  with  one 
voice,  and,  wheeling  round,  they  ran  down  the  Scout,  joined  by 
the  contingent  from  the  smithy,  some  of  them  falling  headlong 
among  the  heather  in  their  agony  of  flight,  others  ruthlessly 
knocking  over  those  in  front  of  them  who  seemed  to  be  in  their 
way.  In  a  few  seconds,  as  it  seemed,  the  whole  Scout  was  left  to 
itself  and  the  night.  Footsteps,  voices,  all  were  gone — save  for 
one  long  peal  of  most  human,  but  still  elfish,  mirth,  which  came 
from  the  Red  Brook. 


CHAPTER  XI 

A  DARK  figure  sprang  down  from  the  wall  of  the  smithy,  leapt 
along  the  heather,  and  plunged  into  the  bushes  along  the  brook. 
A  cry  in  another  key  was  heard. 

David  emerged,  dragging  something  behind  him. 

'  Yo  limb,  yo  !  How  dare  yo,  yo  little  beast  ?  Yo  impident 
little  toad  ! '  And  in  a  perfect  frenzy  of  rage  he  shook  what  he 
held.  But  Louie — for  naturally  it  was  Louie — wrenched  herself 
away,  and  stood  confronting  him,  panting,  but  exultant. 

'  I  freetened  'em  !  just  didn't  I  ?  Cantin  humbugs  !  "Jenny 
Crum !  Jenny  Crum ! "  And,  mimicking  the  voice  of  the 
leader,  she  broke  again  into  an  hysterical  shout  of  laughter. 

David,  beside  himself,  hit  out  and  struck  her.  It  was  a  heavy 
blow  which  knocked  her  down,  and  for  a  moment  seemed  to  stun 
her.  Then  she  recovered  her  senses,  and  flew  at  him  in  a  mad 
passion,  weeping  wildly  with  the  smart  and  excitement. 

He  held  her  off,  ashamed  of  himself,  till  she  flung  away, 
shrieking  out — 

'  Go  and  say  its  prayers,  do — good  little  boy — poor  little 
babby.  Ugh,  yo  coward  !  hittin  gells,  that's  all  yo're  good  for.' 

And  she  ran  off  so  fast  that  all  sight  of  her  was  lost  in  a  few 
seconds.  Only  two  or  three  loud  sobs  seemed  to  come  back  from 
the  dark  hollow  below.  As  for  the  boy,  he  stopped  a  second  to 
disentangle  his  feet  from  the  mop  and  the  tattered  sheet  where- 
with Louie  had  worked  her  transformation  scene.  Then  he 
dashed  up  the  hill  again,  past  the  smithy,  and  into  a  track  leading 
out  on  to  the  high  road  between  Castleton  and  Clough  End.  He 
did  not  care  where  he  went.  Five  minutes  ago  he  had  been 
almost  in  heaven  ;  now  he  was  in  hell.  He  hated  Louie,  he  hated 
the  boys  who  had  cut  and  run,  he  loathed  himself.  ISTo ! — religion 
was  not  for  such  as  he.  No  more  canting — no  more  praying — 
away  with  it !  He  seemed  to  shake  all  tlie  emotion  of  the  last 


112  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

few  weeks  from  him  with  scorn  and  haste,  as  he  ran  on,  his 
strong  young  limbs  battling  with  the  wind. 

Presently  he  emerged  on  the  high  road.  To  the  left,  a  hun- 
dred yards  away,  were  the  lights  of  a  wayside  inn  ;  a  farm 
waggon  and  a  pair  of  horses  standing  with  drooped  and  patient 
heads  were  drawn  up  on  the  cobbles  in  front  of  it.  David  felt  in 
his  pockets.  There  was  eighteenpence  in  them,  the  remains  of 
half-a-crown  a  strange  gentleman  had  given  him  in  Clough  End 
the  week  before  for  stopping  a  runaway  horse.  In  he  stalked. 

'  Two  penn'orth  of  gin — hot ! '  he  commanded. 

The  girl  serving  the  bar  brought  it  and  stared  at  him  curi- 
ously. The  glaring  paraffin  lamp  above  his  head  threw  the 
frowjiing  brows  and  wild  eyes,  the  crimson  cheeks,  heaving  chest, 
and  tumbled  hair,  into  strong  light  and  shade.  '  That's  a  quare 
un  ! '  she  thought,  but  she  found  him  handsome  all  the  same,  and, 
retreating  behind  the  beer-tape,  she  eyed  him  surreptitiously. 
She  was  a  raw  country  lass,  not  yet  stript  of  all  her  natural  shy- 
ness, or  she  would  have  begun  to  '  chaff '  him. 

'  Another  ! '  said  David,  pushing  forward  his  glass.  This  time 
he  looked  at  her.  His  reckless  gaze  travelled  over  her  coarse  and 
comely  face,  her  full  figure,  her  bare  arms.  He  drank  the  glass 
she  gave  him,  and  yet  another.  She  began  to  feel  half  afraid 
of  him,  and  moved  away.  The  hot  stimulant  ran  through  his 
veins.  Suddenly  he  felt  his  head  whirling  from  the  effects  of  it, 
but  that  horrible  clutch  of  despair  was  no  longer  on  him.  He 
raised  himself  defiantly  and  turned  to  go,  staggering  along  the 
floor.  He  was  near  the  entrance  when  an  inner  door  opened,  and 
the  carter,  who  had  been  gossiping  in  a  room  behind  with  the 
landlord,  emerged.  He  started  with  astonishment  when  he  saw 
David. 

'  Hullo,  Davy,  what  are  yo  after  ? ' 

David  turned,  nearly  losing  his  balance  as  he  did  so,  and 
clutching  at  the  bar  for  support.  He  found  himself  confronted 
with  Jim  Wigson — his  old  enemy — who  had  been  to  Castleton 
with  a  load  of  hay  and  some  calves,  and  was  on  his  way  back  to 
Kinder  again.  When  he  saw  who  it  was  clinging  to  the  bar 
counter,  Jim  first  stared  and  then  burst  into  a  hoarse  roar  of 
laughter. 

'  Coom  here  !  coom  here  ! '  he  shouted  to  the  party  in  the  back 
parlour.  '  Here's  a  rum  start !  I  do  declare  this  beats  cock- 
fighting  ! — this  do.  Damn  my  eyes  iv  it  doosn't !  Look  at  that 
yoong  limb.  Why  they  towd  me  down  at  Clough  End  this  mornin 
he'd  been  took  "serious" — took  wi  a  prayin  turn — they  did. 
Look  at  un  !  It  ull  tak  'im  till  to-morrow  mornin  to  know  his 
yed  from  his  heels.  He  !  he  !  he  !  Yo're  a  deep  un,  Davy — yo 
are.  But  yo'll  get  a  bastin  when  Hannah  sees  yo — prayin  or  no 
prayin.' 

And  Jim  went  off  into  another  guffaw,  pointing  his  whip  the 
while  at  Davy.  Some  persons  from  the  parlour  crowded  in, 
enjoying  the  fun.  David  did  not  see  them.  He  reached  out  his 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  113 

hand  for  the  glass  he  had  just  emptied,  and  steadying  himself  by 
a  mighty  effort,  flung  it  swift  and  straight  in  Jim  Wigson's  face. 
There  was  a  crash  of  fragments,  a  line  of  blood  appeared  on  the 
young  carter's  chin,  and  a  chorus  of  wrath  and  alarm  rose  from 
the  group  behind  him.  With  a  furious  oath  Jim  placed  a  hand 
on  the  bar,  vaulted  it,  and  fell  upon  the  lad.  David  defended 
himself  blindly,  but  he  was  dazed  with  drink,  and  his  blows  and 
kicks  rained  aimlessly  on  Wigson's  iron  frame.  In  a  second  or 
two  Jim  had  tripped  him  up,  and  stood  over  him,  his  face  ablaze 
with  vengeance  and  conquest. 

'  Yo  yoong  varmint — yo  cantin  yoong  hypocrite  !  I'll  teach  yo 
to  show  imperence  to  your  betters.  Yo  bin  allus  badly  i'  want  o' 
soombody  to  tak  yo  down  a  peg  or  two.  Now  I'll  show  yo.  I'll 
not  fight  yo,  but  I'll  flog  yo—flog  yo— d'  yo  hear  ? ' 

And  raising  his  carter's  whip  he  brought  it  down  on  the  boy's 
back  and  legs.  David  tried  desperately  to  rise — in  vain— Jim  had 
him  by  the  collar ;  and  four  or  five  times  more  the  heavy  whip 
came  down,  avenging  with  each  lash  many  a  slumbering  grudge 
in  the  victor's  soul. 

Then  Jim  felt  his  arm  firmly  caught.  'Now,  Mister  Wigson,' 
cried  the  landlord — a  little  man,  but  a  wiry — '  yo'll  not  get  me 
into  trooble.  Let  th'  yoong  ripstitch  go.  Yo've  gien  him  a  taste 
he'll  not  forget  in  a  week  o'  Sundays.  Let  him  go.' 

Jim,  with  more  oaths,  struggled  to  get  free,  but  the  landlord 
had  quelled  many  rows  in  his  time,  and  his  wrists  were  worthy  of 
his  calling.  Meanwhile  his  wife  helped  up  the  boy.  David  was 
no  sooner  on  his  feet  than  he  made  another  mad  rush  for  Wigson, 
and  it  needed  the  combined  efforts  of  landlord,  landlady,  and 
servant-girl  to  part  the  two  again.  Then  the  landlord,  seizing 
David  from  behind  by  '  the  scuft  of  the  neck,'  ran  him  out  to  the 
door  in  a  twinkling. 

'  Go  'long  wi  yo  !  An  if  yo  coom  raisin  th'  divil  here  again, 
see  iv  I  don't  gie  yo  a  souse  on  th'  yed  mysel.'  And  he  shoved 
his  charge  out  adroitly  and  locked  the  door. 

David  staggered  across  the  road  as  though  still  under  the 
impetus  given  by  the  landlord's  shove. 

The  servant-girl  took  advantage  of  the  loud  cross-fire  of  talk 
which  immediately  rose  at  the  bar  round  Jim  Wigson  to  run  to  a 
corner  window  and  lift  the  blind.  The  boy  was  sitting  on  a  heap 
of  stones  for  mending  the  road,  looking  at  the  inn.  Other  passers- 
by  had  come  in,  attracted  by  the  row,  and  the  girl  slipped  out 
unperceived,  opened  the  side  door,  and  ran  across  the  road.  It 
had  begun  to  rain,  and  the  drops  splashed  in  her  face. 

David  was  sitting  leaning  forward,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  lighted 
windows  of  the  house  opposite.  The  rays  which  came  from  them 
showed  her  that  his  nose  and  forehead  were  bleeding,  and  that 
the  blood  was  dripping  unheeded  on  the  boy's  clothes.  He  was 
utterly  powerless,  and  trembling  all  over,  but  his  look  '  gave  her 
a  turn.' 

'  Now,  luke  here,'  she  said,  bending  down  to  him.     '  Yo  jes  go 


114  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

whoam.     Wigson,  he'll  be  out  direckly,  an  he'll  do  yo  a  hurt  iv  he 
finds  yo.     Coom,  I'll  put  yo  i'  the  way  for  Kinder.' 

And  before  he  could  gather  his  will  to  resist,  she  had  dragged 
him  up  with  her  strong  countrywoman's  arms  and  was  leading 
him  along  the  road  to  the  entrance  of  the  lane  he  had  come 

by. 

'  Lor,  yo  are  bleedin,'  she  said  compassionately  ;  '  he  shud  ha 
thowt  as  how  yo  wor  nobbut  a  lad — an  it  wor  he  begun  aggin  fust. 
He's  a  big  bully  is  Wigson.'  And  impulsively  raising  her  apron 
she  applied  it  to  the  blood,  David  quite  passive  all  the  while. 
The  great  clumsy  lass  nearly  kissed  him  for  pity. 

'  Now  then,'  she  said  at  last,  turning  him  into  the  lane,  '  yo 
know  your  way,  an  I  mun  goo,  or  they'll  be  raisin  the  parish 
arter  me.  Gude  neet  to  yo,  an  keep  out  o'  Wigson's  seet.  Rest 
yursel  a  bit  theer — agen  th'  wall.' 

And  leaving  him  leaning  against  the  wall,  she  reluctantly 
departed,  stopping  to  look  back  at  him  two  or  three  times  in  spite 
of  the  rain,  till  the  angle  of  the  wall  hid  him  from  view. 

The  rain  poured  down  and  the  wind  whistled  through  the 
rough  lane.  David  presently  slipped  down  upon  a  rock  jutting 
from  the  wall,  and  a  fevered,  intermittent  sleep  seized  him — the 
result  of  the  spirits  he  had  teen  drinking.  His  will  could  oppose 
no  resistance  ;  he  slept  on  hour  after  hour,  sheltered  a  little  by  an 
angle  of  the  wall,  but  still  soaked  by  rain  and  buffeted  by  the 
wind. 

When  he  awoke  he  staggered  suddenly  to  his  feet.  The  smart 
of  his  back  and  legs  recalled  him,  after  a  few  moments  of  be- 
wilderment, to  a  mental  torture  he  had  scarcely  yet  had  time  to 
feel.  He — David  Grieve — had  been  beaten — thrashed  like  a  dog 
— by  Jim  Wigson  !  The  remembered  fact  brought  with  it  a 
degradation  of  mind  and  body — a  complete  unstringing  of  the 
moral  fibres,  which  made  even  revenge  seem  an  impossible  output 
of  energy.  A  nature  of  this  sort,  with  such  capacities  and 
ambitions,  carries  about  with  it  a  sense  of  supremacy,  a  natural, 
indispensable  self-conceit  which  acts  as  the  sheath  to  the  bud,  and 
is  the  condition  of  healthy  development.  Break  it  down  and  you 
bruise  and  jeopardise  the  flower  of  life. 

Jim  Wigson  ! — the  coarse,  ignorant  lout  with  whom  he  had 
been,  more  or  less,  at  feud  since  his  first  day  in  Kinder,  whom  he 
had  despised  with  all  the  strength  of  his  young  vanity.  By 
to-morrow  all  Kinder  would  know,  and  all  Kinder  would  laugh. 
'  What !  yo  whopped  Reuben  Grieve's  nevvy,  Jim  ?  Wai,  an  a 
good  thing,  too  !  A  lick  now  an  again  ud  do  him  noa  harm — a 
cantankerous  yoong  rascot — pert  an  proud,  like  t'  passon's  pig, 
I  say.'  David  could  hear  the  talk  to  be  as  though  it  were  actually 
beside  him.  It  burnt  into  his  ear. 

He  groped  his  way  through  the  lane  and  on  to  the  moor — 
trembling  with  physical  exhaustion,  the  morbid  frenzy  within  him 
choking  his  breath,  the  storm  beating  in  his  face.  What  was  that 
black  mass  to  his  right  ? — the  smithy  ?  A  hard  sob  rose  in  his 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  115 

throat.  Oh,  he  had  been  so  near  to  an  ideal  world  of  sweetness, 
purity,  holiness  !  Was  it  a  year  ago  ? 

With  great  difficulty  he  found  the  crossing-place  in  the  brook, 
and  then  the  gap  in  the  wall  which  led  him  into  the  farm  fields. 
When  he  was  still  a  couple  of  fields  off  the  house  he  heard  the 
dogs  beginning.  But  he  heard  them  as  though  in  a  dream. 

At  last  he  stood  at  the  door  and  fumbled  for  the  handle. 
Locked  !  Why,  what  time  could  it  be  ?  He  tried  to  remember 
what  time  he  had  left  home,  but  failed.  At  last  he  knocked,  and 
just  as  he  did  so  he  perceived  through  a  chink  of  the  kitchen 
shutter  a  light  on  the  scrubbed  deal  table  inside,  and  Hannah's 
figure  beside  it.  At  the  sound  of  the  knocker  Hannah  rose,  put 
away  her  work  with  deliberation,  snuffed  the  candle,  and  then 
moved  with  it  to  the  door  of  the  kitchen.  The  boy  watched  her 
with  a  quickly  beating  heart  and  whirling  brain.  She  opened  the 
door. 

'  Whar  yo  bin  ? '  she  demanded  sternly.  '  I'd  like  to  know 
what  business  yo  have  to  coom  in  this  time  o'  neet,  an  your  uncle 
fro  whoam.  Yo've  bin  in  mischief,  I'll  be  bound.  Theer's  Louie 
coom  back  wi  a  black  eye,  an  jcs  because  she  woan't  say  nowt 
about  it,  I  know  as  it's  yo  are  at  t'  bottom  o'  't.  I'm  reg'lar  sick 
o'  sich  doins  in  a  decent  house.  Whar  yo  bin,  I  say  ?' 

And  this  time  she  held  the  candle  up  so  as  to  see  him.  She 
had  been  sitting  fuming  by  herself,  and  was  in  one  of  her  blackest 
tempers.  David's  misdemeanour  was  like  food  to  a  hungry 
instinct. 

'  I  went  to  prayer-meetin,'  the  lad  said  thickly.  It  seemed  to 
him  as  though  the  words  came  all  in  the  wrong  order. 

Hannah  bent  forward  and  gave  a  sudden  cry. 

'  Why,  yo  bin  fightin  !  Yo're  all  ower  blood  !  Yo  bin  fightin, 
and  I'll  bet  a  thousand  pund  yo  draw'd  in  Louie  too.  And 
sperrits  \  Why,  yo  smell  o'  sperrits  !  Yo're  jes  reekin  wi  'em  ! 
Wai,  upon  my  word  ! ' — and  Hannah  drew  herself  back,  flinging 
every  slow  word  in  his  face  like  a  blow.  '  Yo  feature  your  mither, 
yo  do,  boath  on  you,  pretty  close.  I  allus  said  it  ud  coom  out  i' 
yo  too.  Prayer-meetin  !  Yo  yoong  hypocrite  !  Gang  your  ways  ! 
Yo  may  sleep  i'  th'  stable  ;  it's  good  enough  liggin  for  yo  this  neet. ' 

And  before  he  had  taken  in  her  words  she  had  slammed  the 
door  in  his  face,  and  locked  it.  He  made  a  feeble  rush  for  it  in 
vain.  Hannah  marched  back  into  the  kitchen,  listening  instinc- 
tively first  to  him  left  outside,  and  then  for  any  sound  there  might 
be  from  upstairs.  In  a  minute  or  two  she  heard  uneven  steps 
going  away  ;  but  there  was  no  movement  in  the  room  overhead. 
Louie  was  sleeping  heavily.  As  for  Hannah,  she  sat  down  again 
with  a  fierce  decision  of  gesture,  which  seemed  to  vibrate  through 
the  kitchen  and  all  it  held.  Who  could  find  fault  with  her?  It 
would  be  a  lesson  to  him.  It  was  not  a  cold  night,  and  there  was 
straw  in  the  stable — a  deal  better  lying  than  such  a  boy  deserved. 
As  she  thought  of  his  '  religious '  turn  she  shrugged  her  shoulders 
with  a  bitter  scorn. 


116  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

The  night  wore  on  in  the  high  Kinder  valley.  The  stormy 
wind  and  rain  beat  in  great  waves  of  sound  and  flood  against  the 
breast  of  the  mountain  ;  the  Kinder  stream  and  the  Red  Brook 
danced  under  the  heavy  drops.  The  grouse  lay  close  and  silent 
in  the  sheltering  heather  ;  even  the  owls  in  the  lower  woods  made 
no  sound.  Still,  the  night  was  not  perfectly  dark,  for  towards 
midnight  a  watery  moon  rose,  and  showed  itself  at  intervals 
between  the  pelting  showers. 

In  the  Dawsons'  little  cottage  on  Frimley  Moor  there  were  still 
lights  showing  when  that  pale  moon  appeared.  Margaret  was 
watching  late.  She  and  another  woman  sat  by  the  fire  talking 
under  their  breaths.  A  kettle  was  beside  her  with  a  long  spout, 
which  sent  the  steam  far  into  the  room,  keeping  the  air  of  it 
moist  and  warm  for  the  poor  bronchitic  old  man  who  lay  close- 
curtained  from  the  draughts  on  the  wooden  bed  in  the  corner. 

The  kettle  sang,  the  fire  crackled,  and  the  wind  shook  the 
windows  and  doors.  But  suddenly,  through  the  other  sounds, 
Margaret  was  aware  of  an  intermittent  knocking — a  low,  hesi- 
tating sound,  as  of  some  one  outside  afraid,  and  yet  eager,  to 
make  himself  heard. 

She  started  up,  and  her  companion — a  homely  neighbour,  one 
of  those  persons  whose  goodness  had,  perhaps,  helped  to  shape 
poor  Margaret's  philosophy  of  life — looked  round  with  a  scared 
expression. 

'  Whoiver  can  it  be,  this  time  o'  neet  ? '  said  Margaret — and 
she  looked  at  the  old  clock — '  why,  it's  close  on  middle-neet ! ' 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  then  she  went  to  the  door,  and  bent 
her  mouth  to  the  chink — 

'  Who  are  yo  ?  What  d'  yo  want  ? '  she  asked,  in  a  distinct 
but  low  voice,  so  as  not  to  disturb  'Lias. 

No  answer  for  a  minute.  Then  her  ear  caught  some  words 
from  outside.  With  an  exclamation  she  unlocked  the  door  and 
threw  it  open. 

'  Davy  !     Davy  ! '  she  cried,  almost  forgetting  her  patient. 

The  boy  clung  to  the  lintel  without  a  word. 

'  Coom  your  ways  in  ! '  she  said  peremptorily,  catching  him  by 
the  sleeve.  '  We  conno  ha  no  draughts  on  th'  owd  man. ' 

And  she  drew  him  into  the  light,  and  shut  the  door.  Then  as 
the  shaded  candle  and  firelight  fell  on  the  tall  lad,  wavering  now 
to  this  side,  now  to  that,  as  though  unable  to  support  himself,  his 
clothes  dripping  on  the  flags,  his  face  deadly  white,  save  for  the 
smears  of  blood  upon  it,  the  two  women  fell  back  in  terror. 

'  Will  yo  gie  me  shelter  ? '  said  the  boy,  hoarsely  ;  '  I  bin  lying 
hours  i'  th'  wet.  Aunt  Hannah  turned  me  out.' 

Margaret  came  close  to  him  and  looked  him  all  over. 

'  What  for  did  she  turn  yo  out,  Davy  ? ' 

'  I  wor  late.  I'd  been  fight  in  Jim  Wigson,  an  she  smelt  me  o' 
drink.' 

And  suddenly  the  lad  sank  down  on  a  stool  near,  and  laid  his 
head  in  his  hands,  as  though  he  could  hold  it  up  no  longer. 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  117 

Margaret's  blanched  old  face  melted  all  in  a  minute. 

'  Howd  'un  up  quick  1 '  she  said  to  her  companion,  still  in  a 
whisper.  '  He  hanno  got  a  dry  thread  on — and  luke  at  that  cut 
on  his  yed — why,  he'll  be  laid  up  for  weeks,  maybe,  for  this. 
Get  his  cloos  off,  an  we'll  put  him  on  my  bed  then.' 

And  between  them  they  dragged  him  up,  and  Margaret  began 
to  strip  off  his  jacket.  As  they  held  him — David  surrendering 
himself  passively — the  curtain  of  the  bed  was  drawn  back,  and 
'Lias,  raising  himself  on  an  elbow,  looked  out  into  the  room.  As 
he  caught  sight  of  the  group  of  the  boy  and  the  two  women, 
arrested  in  their  task  by  the  movement  of  the  curtain,  the  old 
man's  face  expressed,  first  a  weak  and  agitated  bewilderment, 
and  then  in  an  instant  it  cleared. 

His  dream  wove  the  sight  into  itself,  and  'Lias  knew  all  about 
it.  His  thin  long  features,  with  the  white  hair  hanging  about 
them,  took  an  indulgent  amused  look. 

'  Bony — eh,  Bony,  is  that  yo,  man  ?  Eh,  but  yo're  cold  an 
pinched,  loike  !  A  gude  glass  o'  English  grog  ud  not  come  amiss 
to  yo.  An  your  coat,  an  your  boots — what  is  't  drippin  ?  Snaw  ? 
Yo  make  a  man's  backbane  freeze  t'  see  yo.  An  there's  hot  wark 
behind  yo,  too.  Moscow  might  ha  warmed  yo,  I'm  thinkin, 
an — 

But  the  weak  husky  voice  gave  way,  and  'Lias  fell  back,  still 
holding  the  curtain,  though,  in  his  emaciated  hand,  and  straining 
his  dim  eyes  on  David.  Margaret,  with  tears,  ran  to  him,  tried 
to  quiet  him  and  to  shut  out  the  light  from  him  again.  But  he 
pushed  her  irritably  aside. 

'  No,  Margaret, — doan't  intrude.  "What  d'  yo  know  about  it  ? 
Yo  know  nowt,  Margaret.  When  did  yo  iver  heer  o'  the  Moscow 
campaign  ?  Let  me  be,  woan't  yo  ? ' 

But  perceiving  that  he  would  not  be  quieted,  she  turned  him 
on  his  pillows,  so  that  he  could  see  the  boy  at  his  ease. 

'  He's  bin  out  i'  th'  wet,  'Lias  dear,  has  Davy,'  she  said  ;  '  and 
it's  nobbut  a  clashy  night.  We  mun  gie  him  summat  hot,  and  a 
place  to  sleep  in.' 

But  the  old  man  did  not  listen  to  her.  He  lay  looking  at 
David,  his  pale  blue  eyes  weirdly  visible  in  his  haggard  face,  mut- 
tering to  himself.  He  was  still  tramping  in  the  snow  with  the 
French  army. 

Then,  suddenly,  for  the  first  time,  he  seemed  troubled.  He 
stared  up  at  the  pale  miserable  boy  who  stood  looking  at  him 
with  trembling  lips.  His  own  face  began  to  work  painfully,  his 
dream  struggled  with  recognition. 

Margaret  drew  David  quickly  away.  She  hurried  him  into 
the  further  corner  of  the  cottage,  where  he  was  out  of  sight  of 
the  bed.  There  she  quickly  stripped  him  of  his  wet  garments,  as 
any  mother  might  have  done,  found  an  old  flannel  shirt  of  'Lias's 
for  him,  and,  wrapping  him  close  in  a  blanket,  she  made  him  lie 
down  on  her  own  bed,  he  being  now  much  too  weak  to  realise 
what  was  done  with  him.  Then  she  got  an  empty  bottle,  filled  it 


118  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  I 

from  the  kettle,  and  put  it  to  his  feet ;  and  finally  she  brought  a 
bowlful  of  warm  water  and  a  bit  of  towel,  and,  sitting  down  by 
him,  she  washed  the  blood  and  dirt  away  from  his  face  and  hand, 
and  smoothed  down  the  tangled  black  hair.  She,  too,  noticed 
the  smell  of  spirits,  and  shook  her  head  over  it ;  but  her  mother- 
Mness  grew  with  every  act  of  service,  and  when  she  had  made 
him  warm  and  comfortable,  and  he  was  dropping  into  the  dead 
sleep  of  exhaustion,  she  drew  her  old  hand  tenderly  across  his 
brow. 

'He  do  feature  yan  o'  my  own  lads  so  as  he  lies  theer,'  she 
said  tremulously  to  her  friend  at  the  fire,  as  though  explaining 
herself.  '  When  they'd  coom  home  late  fro  wark,  I'd  use  to  hull 
'em  up  so  mony  a  time.  Ay,  I'd  been  woonderin  what  had  coom 
to  th'  boy.  I  thowt  he'd  been  goin  wrang  soomhow,  or  he'd  ha 
coom  aw  these  weeks  to  see  'Lias  an  me.  It's  a  poor  sort  o' 
family  he's  got.  That  Hannah  Grieve's  a  hard  un,  I'll  uphowd 
yo.  Theer's  a  deal  o'  her  fault  in  't,  yo  may  mak  sure. ' 

Then  she  went  to  give  'Lias  some  brandy — he  lived  on  little 
else  now.  He  dropped  asleep  again,  and,  coming  back  to  the 
hearth,  she  consented  to  lie  down  before  it  while  her  friend 
watched.  Her  failing  frame  was  worn  out  with  nursing  and 
want  of  rest,  and  she  was  soon  asleep. 

When  Davy  awoke  the  room  was  full  of  a  chill  daylight.  As 
he  moved  he  felt  himself  stiff  all  over.  The  sensation  brought 
back  memory,  and  the  boy's  whole  being  seemed  to  shrink 
together.  He  burrowed  first  under  his  coverings  out  of  the  light, 
then  suddenly  he  sat  up  in  bed,  in  the  shadow  of  the  little  stair- 
case— or  rather  ladder — which  led  to  the  upper  story,  and  looked 
about  him. 

The  good  woman  who  had  shared  Margaret's  watch  was  gone 
back  to  her  own  home  and  children.  Margaret  had  made  up  the 
fire,  tidied  the  room,  and,  at  'Lias's  request,  drawn  up  the  blinds. 
She  had  just  given  him  some  beef-tea  and  brandy,  sponged  his 
face,  and  lifted  him  on  his  pillows.  There  seemed  to  be  a  revival 
of  life  in  the  old  man,  death  was  for  the  moment  driven  back  ; 
and  Margaret  hung  over  him  in  an  ecstasy,  the  two  crooning 
together.  David  could  see  her  thin  bent  figure — the  sharpened 
delicacy  of  the  emaciated  face  set  in  the  rusty  black  net  cap 
which  was  tied  under  the  chin,  and  fell  in  soft  frills  on  the  still 
brown  and  silky  hair.  He  saw  her  weaver's  hand  folded  round 
'Lias's,  and  he  could  hear  'Lias  speaking  in  a  weak  thread  of  a 
voice,  but  still  sanely  and  rationally.  It  gave  him  a  start  to 
catch  some  of  the  words — he  had  been  so  long  accustomed  to  the 
visionary  'Lias. 

'  Have  yo  rested,  Margaret  ? ' 

'  Ay,  dear  love,  three  hours  an  moor.  Betsy  James  wor  here  ; 
she  saw  yo  wanted  for  nowt.  She's  a  gude  creetur,  ain't  she, 
'Lias?' 

'Ay,  but  noan  so  good  as  my  Margaret,'  said  the  old  man, 
looking  at  her  wistfully.  '  But  yo'll  wear  yorsel  down,  Margaret ; 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  119 

'  yo've  had  no  rest  for  neets.  Yo're  allus  toilin'  and  moilin',  an 
I'm  no  worth  it,  Margaret.' 

The  tears  gushed  to  the  wife's  eyes.  It  was  only  with  the 
nearness  of  death  that  'Lias  seemed  to  have  found  out  his  debt  to 
her.  To  both,  her  lifelong  service  had  been  the  natural  offering 
of  the  lower  to  the  higher  ;  she  had  not  been  used  to  gratitude, 
and  she  could  not  bear  it. 

'  Dear  heart !  dear  love  ! '  David  heard  her  say  ;  and  then 
there  came  to  his  half-reluctant  ear  caresses  such  as  a  mother 
gives  her  child.  He  laid  his  head  on  his  knees,  trying  to  shut 
them  out.  He  wished  with  a  passionate  and  bitter  regret  that  he 
had  not  been  so  many  weeks  without  coming  near  these  two 
people  ;  and  now  'Lias  was  going  fast,  and  after  to-day  he  would 
see  them  both  no  more — for  ever  ? 

Margaret  heard  him  moving,  and  nodded  back  to  him  over  her 
shoulder. 

'  Yo've  slept  well,  Davy, — better  nor  I  thowt  yo  would.  Your 
cloos  are  by  yo — atwixt  yo  an  t'  stairs. ' 

And  there  he  found  them,  dry  and  brushed.  He  dressed 
hastily  and  came  forward  to  the  fire.  'Lias  recognised  him 
feebly,  Margaret  watching  anxiously  to  see  whether  his  fancies 
would  take  him  again.  In  this  tension  of  death  and  parting  his 
visions  had  become  almost  more  than  she  could  bear.  But  'Lias 
lay  quiet. 

'Davy  wor  caught  i'  th'  rain,  and  I  gave  him  a  bed,'  she 
explained  again,  and  the  old  man  nodded  without  a  word. 

Then  as  she  prepared  him  a  bowl  of  oatmeal  she  stood  by  the 
fire  giving  the  boy  motherly  advice.  He  must  go  back  home,  of 
course,  and  never  mind  Hannah  ;  there  would  come  a  time  when 
he  would  get  his  chance  like  other  people  ;  and  he  mustn't  drink, 
for,  '  i'  th'  first  place,  drink  wor  a  sad  waste  o'  good  wits,'  and 
David's  were  '  better'n  most ; '  and  in  the  second,  '  it  wor  a  sin 
agen  the  Lord.' 

David  sat  with  his  head  drooped  in  his  hand  apparently  lis- 
tening. In  reality,  her  gentle  babble  passed  over  him  almost 
unheeded.  He  was  aching  in  mind  and  body  ;  his  strong  youth, 
indeed,  had  but  just  saved  him  from  complete  physical  collapse ; 
for  he  had  lain  an  indefinite  time  on  the  soaking  moor,  till  misery 
and  despair  had  driven  him  to  Margaret's  door.  But  his  moral 
equilibrium  was  beginning  to  return,  in  virtue  of  a  certain  resolu- 
tion, the  one  thing  which  now  stood  between  him  and  the  black 
gulf  of  the  night.  He  ate  his  porridge  and  then  he  got  up. 

'  I  mun  goo,  Margaret.' 

He  would  fain  have  thanked  her,  but  the  words  choked  in  his 
throat. 

'  Ay,  soa  yo  mun,  Davy,'  said  the  little  body  briskly.  '  If 
theer's  an  onpleasant  thing  to  do  it's  best  doon  quickly — yo  mun 
go  back  and  do  your  duty.  Coom  and  see  us  when  yo're  passin 
again.  An  say  good-bye  to  'Lias.  He's  that  wick  this  mornm — 
ain't  yo,  'Lias  ? ' 


120  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  i 

And  with  a  tender  cheerfulness  she  ran  across  to  'Lias  and 
told  him  Davy  was  going. 

'Good-bye,  Davy,  my  lad,  good-bye,'  murmured  the  old  man, 
as  he  felt  the  boy's  strong  fingers  touching  his.  '  Have  yo  been 
readin  owt,  Davy,  since  we  saw  yo  ?  It's  a  long  time, 
Davy.' 

''No,  nowt  of  ony  account,'  said  David,  looking  away. 

'  Ay,  but  yo  mun  keep  it  up.  Coom  when  yo  like  ;  I've  not 
mony  books,  but  yo  know  yo  can  have  'em  aw.  I  want  noan  o' 
them  now,  do  I,  Marg'ret  ?  But  I  want  for  nowt — nowt.  Dyin  's 
long,  but  it's  varra — varra  peaceful.  Margaret ! ' 

And  withdrawing  his  hand  from  Davy,  'Lias  laid  it  in  his 
wife's  with  a  long,  long  sigh.  David  left  them  so.  He  stole  out 
unperceived  by  either  of  them. 

When  he  got  outside  he  stood  for  a  moment  under  the 
sheltering  sycamores  and  laid  his  cheek  against  the  door.  The 
action  contained  all  he  could  not  say. 

Then  he  sped  along  towards  the  farm.  The  sun  was  rising 
through  the  autumn  mists,  striking  on  the  gold  of  the  chestnuts, 
the  red  of  the  cherry  trees.  There  were  spaces  of  intense  blue 
among  the  rolling  clouds,  and  between  the  storm  past  and  the 
storm  to  come  the  whole  moorland  world  was  lavishly,  garishly 
bright. 

He  paused  at  the  top  of  the  pasture-fields  to  look  at  the  farm. 
Smoke  was  already  rising  from  the  chimney.  Then  Aunt  Hannah 
was  up,  and  he  must  mind  himself.  He  crept  on  under  walls, 
till  he  got  to  the  back  of  the  farmyard.  Then  he  slipped  in,  ran 
into  the  stable,  and  got  an  old  coat  of  his  left  there  the  day 
before.  There  was  a  copy  of  a  Methodist  paper  lying  near  it.  He 
took  it  up  and  tore  it  across  with  passion.  But  his  rage  was 
not  so  much  with  the  paper.  It  was  his  own  worthless,  unstable, 
miserable  self  he  would  have  rent  if  he  could.  The  wreck  of 
ideal  hopes,  the  defacement  of  that  fair  image  of  itself  which 
every  healthy  youth  bears  about  with  it,  could  not  have  been 
more  pitifully  expressed. 

Then  he  looked  round  to  see  if  there  was  anything  else  that 
he  could  honestly  take.  Yes— an  ash  stick  he  had  cut  himself 
a  week  or  two  ago.  Nothing  else — and  there  was  Tibby  moving 
and  beginning  to  bark  in  the  cowhouse. 

He  ran  across  the  road,  and  from  a  safe  shelter  in  the  fields  on 
the  farther  side  he  again  looked  back  to  the  farm.  There  was 
Louie's  room,  the  blind  still  down.  He  thought  of  his  blow  of  the 
night  before — of  his  promises  to  her.  Aye,  she  would  fret  over 
his  going— he  knew  that — in  her  own  wild  way.  She  would  think 
he  had  been  a  beast  to  her.  So  he  had — so  he  had  !  There  surged 
up  in  his  mind  inarticulate  phrases  of  remorse,  of  self -excuse,  as 
though  he  were  talking  to  her. 

Some  day  he  would  come  back  and  claim  her.  But  when? 
His  buoyant  self-dependence  was  all  gone.  It  had  nothing  to  do 
with  his  present  departure.  That  came  simply  from  the  fact  that 


CHAP,  xi  CHILDHOOD  121 

it  was  impossible  for  him  to  go  on  living  in  Kinder  any  longer — 
he  did  not  stop  to  analyse  the  whys  and  wherefores. 

But  suddenly  a  nervous  horror  of  seeing  anyone  he  knew, 
now  that  the  morning  was  advancing,  startled  him  from  his 
hiding-place.  He  ran  up  towards  the  Scout  again,  so  as  to 
make  a  long  circuit  round  the  Wigsons'  farm.  As  he  dis- 
tinguished the  walls  of  it  a  shiver  of  passion  ran  through  the 
young  body.  Then  he  struck  off  straight  across  the  moors 
towards  Glossop. 

One  moment  he  stood  on  the  top  of  Mardale  Moor.  On  one 
side  of  him  was  the  Kinder  valley,  Needham  Farm  still  showing 
among  its  trees  ;  the  white  cataract  of  the  Downfall  cleaving  the 
dark  wall  of  the  Scout,  and  calling  to  the  runaway  in  that  voice 
of  storm  he  knew  so  well ;  the  Mermaid's  Pool  gleaming  like  an 
eye  in  the  moorland.  On  the  other  side  were  hollow  after  hollow, 
town  beyond  town,  each  with  its  cap  of  morning  smoke.  There 
was  New  Mills,  there  was  Stockport,  there  in  the  far  distance  was 
Manchester. 

The  boy  stood  a  moment  poised  between  the  two  worlds,  his 
ash-stick  in  his  hand,  the  old  coat  wound  round  his  arm.  Then 
at  a  bound  he  cleared  a  low  stone  wall  beside  him  and  ran  down 
the  Glossop  road. 

Twelve  hours  later  Reuben  Grieve  climbed  the  long  hill  to  the 
farm.  His  wrinkled  face  was  happier  than  it  had  been  for 
months,  and  his  thoughts  were  so  pleasantly  occupied  that  he 
entirely  failed  to  perceive,  for  instance,  the  behaviour  of  an 
acquaintance,  who  stopped  and  started  as  he  met  him  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Kinder  lane,  made  as  though  he  would  have  spoken, 
and,  thinking  better  of  it,  walked  on.  Reuben — the  mendacious 
Reuben— had  done  very  well  with  his  summer  stock — very  well 
indeed.  And  part  of  his  earnings  was  now  safely  housed  in  the 
hands  of  an  old  chapel  friend,  to  whom  he  had  confided  them 
under  pledge  of  secrecy.  But  he  took  a  curious,  excited  pleasure 
in  the  thought  of  the  '  poor  mouth '  he  was  going  to  make  to 
Hannah.  He  was  growing  reckless  in  his  passion  for  restitution 
— always  provided,  however,  that  he  was  not  called  upon  to  brave 
his  wife  openly.  A  few  more  such  irregular  savings,  and,  if  an 
opening  turned  up  for  David,  he  could  pay  the  money  and  pack 
off  the  lad  before  Hannah  could  look  round.  He  could  never  do  it 
under  her  opposition,  but  he  thought  he  could  do  it  and  take  the 
consequences— he  thought  he  could. 

He  opened  his  own  gate.  There  on  the  house  doorstep  stood 
Hannah,  whiter  and  gi'immer  than  ever. 

'Reuben  Grieve,'  she  said  quickly,  'your  nevvy's  run  away. 
An  if  yo  doan't  coom  and  keep  your  good-for-nothin  niece  in  her 
place,  and  make  udder  foak  keep  a  civil  tongue  i'  their  head  to 
your  wife,  I'll  leave  your  house  this  neet,  as  sure  as  I  wor  born  a 
Martin  ! ' 

Reuben  stumbled  into  the  house.     There  was  a  wild  rush 


123  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BK.  I,  CH.  xi 

downstairs,  and  Louie  fell  upon  him,  David's  blow  showing 
ghastly  plain  in  her  white  quivering  face. 

'  Whar's  Davy  ? '  she  said.  '  Yo've  got  him  ! — he's  hid  soom- 
where — yo  know  whar  he  is  !  I'll  not  stay  here  if  yo  conno  find 
him  !  It  wor  her  fault ' — and  she  threw  out  a  shaking  hand 
towards  her  aunt — '  she  druv  him  out  last  neet — an  Dawsons 
took  him  in — an  iverybody's  cryin  shame  on  her !  And  if  yo 
doan't  mak  her  find  him — she  knows  where  he  is — I'll  not  stay  in 
this  hole  !— I'll  kill  her !— I'll  burn  th'  house  !— I'll— ' 

The  child  stopped — panting,  choked — beside  herself. 

Hannah  made  a  threatening  step,  but  at  her  gesture  Reuben 
sprang  up,  and  seizing  her  by  both  wrists  he  looked  at  her  from  a 
height,  as  a  judge  looks.  Never  had  those  dull  eyes  met  her  so 
before. 

'  Woman  ! '  he  cried  fiercely.  '  Woman  !  what  ha  yo  doon  wi 
Sandy's  son  ? ' 


BOOK  II 

YOUTH 


CHAPTER  I 

A  TALL  youth  carrying  a  parcel  of  books  under  his  arm  was  hur- 
rying along  Market  Place,  Manchester.  Beside  him  were  covered 
flower  stalls  bordering  the  pavement,  in  front  of  him  the  domed 
mass  of  the  Manchester  Exchange,  and  on  all  sides  he  had  to 
push  his  way  through  a  crowd  of  talking,  chaffering,  hurrying 
humanity.  Presently  he  stopped  at  the  door  of  a  restaurant 
bearing  the  idyllic  and  altogether  remarkable  name — there  it 
was  in  gilt  letters  over  the  door — of  the  '  Fruit  and  Flowers  Par- 
lour.' On  the  side  post  of  the  door  a  bill  of  fare  was  posted, 
which  the  young  man  looked  up  and  down  with  careful  eyes.  It 
contained  a  strange  medley  of  items  in  all  tongues — 

Marrow  pie 

Haricots  d  la  Lune  de  Miel 
Vol-au-  Vent  d  la  bonne  Sante 

Tomato  fritters 
Cheese  'Ticements 
Salad  saladorum 

And  at  the  bottom  of  the  menu  was  printed  in  bold  red  cha- 
racters, '  No  meat,  no  disease.  Ergo,  no  meat,  no  sin.  Fellow- 
citizens,  leave  your  carnal  foods,  and  try  a  more  excellent  way. 
I.E.  Push  the  door  and  walk  in.  The  Fruit  and  Flowers  Parlour 
invites  everybody  and  overcharges  nobody.' 

The  youth  did  not  trouble,  however,  to  read  the  notice.  He 
knew  it  and  the  '  Parlour '  behind  it  by  heart.  But  he  moved 
away,  pondering  the  menu  with  a  smile. 

In  his  amused  abstraction — at  the  root  of  which  lay  the  appe- 
tite of  eighteen — he  suddenly  ran  into  a  passer-by,  who  stumbled 
against  a  shop  window  with  an  exclamation  of  pain.  The  youth's 
attention  was  attracted  and  he  stopped  awkwardly. 

'  People  of  your  height,  young  man,  should  look  before  them,' 
said  the  victim,  rubbing  what  seemed  to  be  a  deformed  leg,  while 
his  lips  paled  a  little. 

'Mr.  Ancrum,'  cried  the  other,  amazed. 

'  Davy ! ' 

The  two  looked  at  each  other.  Then  Mr.  Ancrum  gripped 
the  lad's  arm. 

'  Help  me  along,  Davy.  It's  only  a  bruise.  It'll  go  off. 
Where  are  you  going  ? ' 

'  Up  Piccadilly  way  with  a  parcel,'  said  Davy,  looking  askance 


126  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

at  his  companion's  nether  man.  'Did  I  knock  your  bad  leg, 
sir?' 

'  Oh  no,  nothing — never  mind.  Well  now,  Davy,  this  is  queer 
— decidedly  queer.  Four  years  ! — and  we  run  against  each  other 
in  Market  Street  at  last.  Tell  me  the  truth,  Davy — have  you 
long  ago  given  me  up  as  a  man  who  could  make  promises  to  a 
lad  in  difficulties  and  forget  'em  as  soon  as  he  was  out  of  sight? 
Say  it  out,  my  boy.' 

David  flushed  and  looked  down  at  his  companion  with  some 
embarrassment.  Their  old  relation  of  minister  and  pupil  had 
left  a  deep  mark  behind  it.  Moreover,  in  the  presence  of  that 
face  of  Mr.  Ancrum's,  a  long,  thin,  slightly  twisted  face,  with  the 
stamp  somehow  of  a  tragic  sincerity  on  the  eyes  and  mouth,  it 
was  difficult  to  think  as  slightingly  of  his  old  friend  as  he  had 
done  for  a  good  while  past,  apparently  with  excellent  reason. 

'  1  supposed  there  was  something  the  matter,'  he  blurted  out 
at  last. 

'  Well,  never  mind,  Davy,'  said  the  other,  smiling  sadly.  '  We 
can't  talk  here  in  this  din.  But  now  I've  got  you,  I  keep  you. 
Where  are  you  ? ' 

'I'm  in  Half  Street,  sir — Purcell's,  the  bookseller.' 

1  Don't  know  him.  I  never  go  into  a  shop.  I  have  no  money. 
Are  you  apprentice  there?' 

'Well,  there  was  no  binding.  I'm  assistant.  I  do  a  lot  of 
business  one  way  and  another,  buying  and  selling  both.' 

'  How  long  have  you  been  in  Manchester  ? ' 

'Four  years,  sir.' 

The  minister  looked  amazed. 

'  And  I  have  been  here,  off  and  on,  for  the  last  three.  How 
have  we  missed  each  other  all  that  time?  I  made  inquiries  at 
Clough  End,  when — ah,  well,  no  matter;  but  it  was  too  late. 
You  had  decamped,  no  one  could  tell  me  anything.' 

David  walked  on  beside  his  companion,  silent  and  awkward. 
The  explanation  seemed  a  lame  one.  Mr.  Ancrum  had  left 
Clough  End  in  May,  promising  to  look  out  for  a  place  for  the  lad 
at  once,  and  to  let  him  know.  Six  whole  months  elapsed  between 
that  promise  and  David's  own  departure.  Yes,  it  was  lame;  but 
it  was  so  long  ago,  and  so  many  things  had  happened  since,  that 
it  did  not  signify.  Only  he  did  not  somehow  feel  much  effusion 
in  meeting  his  old  friend  and  playfellow  again. 

'  Getting  on,  Davy  ? '  said  Ancrum  presently,  looking  the  lad 
up  and  down. 

David  made  a  movement  of  the  shoulders  which  the  minister 
noticed.  It  was  both  more  free  and  more  graceful  than  ordinary 
English  gesture.  It  reawakened  in  Ancrum  at  once  that  im- 
pression of  something  alien  and  unusual  which  both  David  and 
his  sister  had  often  produced  in  him  while  they  were  still  chil- 
dren. 

'I  don't  know,'  said  the  boy  slowly  ;  and  then,  after  a  hesita- 
tion or  two,  fell  silent. 


CHAP.   I  YOUTH  127 

'Well,  look  here,'  said  Ancrum,  stopping  short;  'this  won't 
do  for  talk,  as  I  said  before  ;  but  I  must  know  all  about  you,  and 
I  must  tell  you  what  I  can  about  myself.  I  lodge  in  Mortimer 
Road,  you  know,  up  Fallowfield  way.  You  can  get  there  by 
tram  in  twenty  minutes  ;  when  will  you  come  and  see  me  ?  To- 
night ? ' 

The  lad  thought  a  moment. 

'Would  Wednesday  night  do,  sir?  I — I  believe  I'm  going  to 
the  music  to-night.' 

'What,  to  the  "Elijah,"  in  the  Free  Trade  Hall?  Appoint 
me  a  place  to  meet — we'll  go  together — and  you  shall  come  home 
to  supper  with  me  afterwards.' 

David  flushed  and  looked  straight  before  him. 

'I  promised  to  take  two  young  ladies,'  he  said,  after  a 
moment,  abruptly. 

'  Oh  ! '  said  Mr.  Ancrum,  laughing.  '  I  apologise.  Well, 
Wednesday  night,  then. — Don't  you  forget,  Davy — half-past 
seven?  Done.  Fourteen,  Mortimer  Koad.  Good-bye.' 

And  the  minister  turned  and  retraced  his  steps  towards  Mar- 
ket Place.  He  walked  slowly,  like  one  much  preoccupied,  and 
might  have  run  into  fresh  risks  but  for  the  instinctive  perception 
of  most  passers-by  that  he  was  not  a  person  to  be  hustled.  Sud- 
denly he  laughed  out — thinking  of  David  and  his  '  young  ladies,' 
and  comparing  the  lad's  admission  with  his  former  attitude 
towards  'gells.'  Well,  time  had  but  wrought  its  natural  work. 
What  a  brilliant  noticeable  creature  altogether — how  unlike  the 
ordinary  run  of  north-country  lads  !  But  that  he  had  been  from 
the  beginning — the  strain  of  some  nimbler  blood  had  always 
shown  itself. 

Meanwhile,  David  made  his  way  up  Piccadilly — did  some 
humourist  divert  himself,  in  days  gone  by,  with  dropping  a 
shower  of  London  names  on  Manchester  streets  ? — and  deposited 
his  parcel.  Then  the  great  clock  of  the  Exchange  struck  twelve, 
and  the  Cathedral  followed  close  upon  it,  the  sounds  swaying 
and  vibrating  above  the  crowds  hurrying  through  Market  Street. 
It  was  a  clamp  October  day.  Above,  the  sky  was  hidden  by  a 
dark  canopy  of  cloud  and  smoke ;  the  Cathedral  on  its  hill  rose 
iron-black  above  the  black  streets  and  river ;  black  mud  en- 
crusted all  the  streets,  and  bespattered  those  that  walked  in  them. 
Nothing  more  dreary  than  the  smoke-grimed  buildings  on  either 
hand,  than  the  hideous  railway  station  across  the  bridge,  or  the 
mud-sprinkled  hoardings  covered  with  flaring  advertisements, 
which  led  up  to  the  bridge,  could  be  well  imagined.  Manchester 
was  at  its  darkest  and  grimmest. 

But  as  David  Grieve  walked  back  along  Market  Street  his 
heart  danced  within  him.  Neither  mud  nor  darkness,  neither 
the  squalor  of  the  streets,  nor  the  penetrating  damp  of  the  air, 
affected  him  at  all.  The  crowd,  the  rush  of  life  about  him,  the 
gas  in  the  shops,  the  wares  on  which  it  shone,  the  endless  faces 
passing  him,  the  sense  of  hurry,  of  business,  of  quick  living — 


128  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

he  saw  and  felt  nothing  else  ;  and  to  these  his  youth  was  all 
atune. 

Arrived  in  Market  Place  again  he  made  his  way  with  alacrity 
to  the  'Parlour.'  For  it  was  dinner  time;  he  had  a  free  half- 
hour,  and  nine  times  out  of  ten  he  spent  it  at  the  '  Parlour.' 

He  walked  in,  put  his  hat  on  its  accustomed  peg,  took  his 
seat  at  a  table  near  the  door,  and  looked  round  for  some  one. 
The  low  widespreading  room  was  well  filled,  mostly  with  clerks 
and  shopmen  ;  the  gas  was  lit  because  of  the  darkness  outside, 
and  showed  off  the  gay  panels  on  the  walls  filled  with  fruit  and 
flower  subjects,  for  which  Adrian  O'Connor  Lomax,  commonly 
called  'Daddy,'  the  owner  of  the  restaurant,  had  given  a  com- 
mission to  some  students  at  the  Mechanics'  Institute,  and  whereof 
he  was  inordinately  proud.  At  the  end  of  the  room  near  the 
counter  was  a  table  occupied  by  about  half  a  dozen  young  men, 
all  laughing  and  talking  noisily,  and  beside  them — shouting, 
gesticulating,  making  dashes,  now  for  one,  now  for  another — 
was  a  figure,  which  David  at  once  set  himself  to  watch,  his  chin 
balanced  on  his  hand,  his  eyes  dancing.  It  was  the  thin  tall 
figure  of  an  oldish  man  in  a  long  frock-coat,  which  opened  in 
front  over  a  gaily  flowered  silk  waistcoat.  On  the  bald  crown 
of  his  head  he  wore  a  black  skull-cap,  below  which  certain  gro- 
tesque and  scanty  tails  of  fair  hair,  carefully  brushed,  fell  to  his 
shoulders.  His  face  was  long  and  sharply  pointed,  and  the 
surface  of  it  bronzed  and  wrinkled  by  long  exposure,  out  of  all 
likeness  to  human  skin.  The  eyes  were  weirdly  prominent  and 
blue  ;  the  gestures  had  the  deliberate  extravagance  of  an  actor  ; 
and  the  whole  man  recalled  a  wizard  of  pantomime. 

David  had  hardly  time  to  amuse  himself  with  the  'chaffing' 
of  Daddy,  which  was  going  on,  and  which  went  on  habitually  at 
the  Parlour  from  morning  till  night,  when  Daddy  perceived  a 
new-comer. 

He  turned  round  sharp  upon  his  heels,  surveyed  the  room 
with  the  frown  of  a  general. 

'  Ah  ! '  he  said  with  a  theatrical  air,  as  he  made  out  the  lad  at 
the  further  table.  '  Gentlemen,  I  let  you  off  for  the  present,' 
and  waving  his  hand  to  them  with  an  indulgent  self-importance, 
which  provoked  a  roar  of  laughter,  he  turned  and  walked  down 
the  restaurant,  with  a  quick  swaying  gait,  to  where  David 
sat. 

David  made  room  for  him  in  a  smiling  silence.  Lomax  sat 
down,  and  the  two  looked  at  each  other. 

'  Davy,'  said  Daddy  severely,  '  why  weren't  vou  here  vester- 
day?' 

'  When  did  you  begin  opening  on  Sundays,  Daddy  ? '  said 
the  youth,  attacking  a  portion  of  marrow  pie,  which  had  just 
been  laid  before  him,  his  gay  curious  eyes  still  wandering  over 
Daddy's  costume,  which  was  to-day  completed  by  a  large  dahlia 
in  the  buttonhole,  as  grotesque  as  the  rest. 

4 Ah  bedad,  but  I'm  losing  my  memory  entirely; — and  you 


CHAP,  i  YOUTH  129 

know  it,  you  varmint.     "Well  then,  it  was  Saturday  you  weren't 
here.' 

'You're  about  right  there.  I  was  let  off  early,  and  got  a 
walk  out  Ramsbottom  way  with  a  fellow.  I  hadn't  stretched 
my  legs  for  two  months,  and— I'll  confess  to  you,  Daddy — that 
when  we  got  down  from  the  moor,  I  was — overtaken — as  the 
pious  people  say — by  a  mutton  chop.' 

The  lad  looked  up  at  him  laughing.  Daddy  surveyed  him 
with  chagrin. 

'  I  knew  you  were  a  worthless  lukewarm  sort  of  a  creature. 
Flesh-eating  's  as  bad  as  drink  for  them  that  have  got  it  in  'em. 
It'll  come  out.  Well,  go  your  ways  !  You'll  never  be  Prime 
Minister.' 

'  Don't  distress  yourself,  Daddy.  As  long  as  marrow  pies  are 
good,  I  shall  eat  'em — you  may  count  on  that.  What's  that 
cheese  affair  down  there  ? '  and  he  pointed  towards  the  last  item 
but  one  in  the  bill  of  fare.  Instead  of  answering,  the  old  man 
turned  on  his  seat,  and  called  to  one  of  the  waitresses  near.  In 
a  second  David  had  a  '  Cheese  'Ticement'  before  him,  at  which  he 
peered  curiously.  Daddy  watched  him,  not  without  some  signs 
of  nervousness. 

'  Daddy,'  said  David,  calmly  looking  up,  '  when  I  last  saw  this 
article  it  was  called  "  Welsh  rabbit."  ' 

'Davy,  you've  no  soul  for  fine  distinctions,'  said  the  other 
hastily.  '  Change  the  subject.  How  have  my  dear  brother-in- 
law  and  you  been  hitting  it  off  lately  ? ' 

David  went  on  with  his  '  'Ticement,'  the  corners  of  his  mouth 
twitching,  for  a  minute  or  so,  then  he  raised  his  head  and  slowly 
shook  it,  looking  Daddy  in  the  face. 

'  We  shall  bear  up  when  we  say  good-bye,  Daddy,  and  I  don't 
think  that  crisis  is  far  off.  It  would  have  come  long  ago,  only  I 
do  happen  to  know  a  provoking  deal  more  about  books  than  any 
assistant  he  ever  had  before.  Last  week  I  picked  him  up  a  copy 
of  "Bells  and  Pomegranates"  for  one  and  nine,  and  he  sold  it 
next  day  for  two  pound  sixteen.  There's  business  for  you, 
Daddy.  That  put  off  our  breach  at  least  a  fortnight,  but  unless 
I  discover  a  first  folio  of  Shakespeare  for  sixpence  between  now 
and  then,  I  don't  see  what's  to  postpone  the  agony  after  that — 
and  if  I  did  I  should  probably  speculate  in  it  myself.  No, 
Daddy,  it's  coming  to  the  point,  as  the  tiger  said  when  he 
reached  the  last  joint  of  the  cow's  tail.  And  it's  your  fault.' 

'  My  fault,  Davy,'  said  Lomax,  half  tremulous,  half  delighted, 
drawing  a  chair  close  up  to  the  table  that  he  might  lose  nothing 
of  the  youth's  confidences.  '  What  d'ye  mean  by  that,  ye  spal- 
peen ?' 

'  Well,  wasn't  it  you  took  me  to  the  Hall  of  Science,  Daddy, 
and  -couldn't  keep  a  quiet  tongue  in  your  head  about  it  after- 
wards ?  Wasn't  it  you  lent  me  the  "  Secularist,"  which  got  me 
into  the  worst  rumpus  of  the  season  ?  Oh,  Daddy,  you're  a  bad 
un  !' 


180  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

And  the  handsome  lad  leant  back  in  his  chair,  stretching  his 
long  legs  and  studying  Daddy  with  twinkling  eyes.  As  for 
Lomax,  he  received  the  onslaught  with  a  curious  mixture  of 
expressions,  in  which  a  certain  malicious  pleasure,  crossed  by  an 
uneasy  sense  of  responsibility,  was  the  most  prominent.  He  sat 
drumming  on  the  table,  his  "straggling  beard  falling  forward  on 
to  his  chest,  his  mouth  pursing  itself  up.  At  last  he  threw  back 
his  head  with  energy. 

'  I'll  not  excuse  myself,  Davy  ;  you're  well  out  of  it.  You'll 
be  a  great  man  yet — always  provided  you  can  manage  yourself  in 
the  matter  of  flesh  meat.  It  was  to  come  one  way  or  the  other — 
you  couldn't  put  up  much  longer  with  such  a  puke-stocking  as 
my  precious  brother-in-law.  (That's  one  of  the  great  points  of 
Shakespeare,  Davy,  my  lad — perhaps  you  haven't  noticed  it — 
you  get  such  a  ruck  of  bad  names  out  of  him  for  the  asking  ! 
Puke-stocking  is  good — real  good.  If  it  wasn't  made  for  a 
sanctimonious  hypocrite  of  a  Baptist  like  Purcell  it  ought  to 
have  been.)  And  "  Spanish-pouch  "  too  !  Oh,  I  love  "  Spanish- 
pouch  "  !  When  I've  called  a  man  "  Spanish-pouch,"  I'm  the 
better  for  it,  Davy — the  bile's  relieved.' 

4  Thank  you,  Daddy  ;  I'll  remember  the  receipt.  I  say,  were 
you  ever  in  Purcell's  shop  ? ' 

'  Purcell's  shop  ?  Why,  of  course  I  was,  you  varmint  !  Wasn't 
it  there  I  met  my  Isabelfa,  his  sister  ?  Ah,  the  poor  thing  !  He 
led  her  a  life;  and  when  I  was  his  assistant  I  took  sides  with  her 
— that  was  the  beginning  of  it  all.  At  first  we  hadn't  got  on  so 
badly — I  had  a  pious  fit  on  myself  in  those  days — but  one  day  at 
tea,  I  had  been  making  free— taking  Isabella's  part,  There  had 
been  a  neighbour  there,  and  the  laugh  had  been  against  him. 
Well,  after  tea,  we  marched  back  to  the  shop,  and  says  he  to  me, 
as  black  as  thunder,  "I'm  quite  willing,  Lomax,  to  be  your 
Christian  brother  in  here  :  when  we're  in  society  I'd  have  you 
remember  it's  different.  You  should  know  your  place."  "Oh, 
should  I  ?"  says  I.  (Isabella  had  been  squeezing  my  hand  under 
the  table  and  I  didn't  care  what  I  said.)  "  Well,  you'd  better  find 

some  one  as  will,  and  be  d d  to  your  Christian  brotherhood." 

And  I  took  my  cap  up  and  marched  out,  leaving  him  struck  a 
pillar  of  salt  with  surprise,  and  that  mad  ! — for  we  were  ir,  the 
middle  of  issuing  the  New  Year's  catalogue,  and  he'd  left  most 
of  it  to  me.  And  three  weeks  after — 

Daddy  rose  quivering  with  excitement,  put  his  thumbs  into 
his  waistcoat  pocket,  and  bent  over  the  back  of  his  chair  towards 
David.  As  he  stood  there,  on  tip-toe,  the  flaps  of  the  long  coat 
falling  back  from  him  like  wings,  his  skull-cap  slightly  awry,  two 
red  spots  on  either  wrinkled  cheek,  and  every  feature  of  the 
sharp  brown  face  alive  with  the  joy  of  his  long-past  vengeance, 
he  was  like  some  strange  perching  bird. 

'  — Three  weeks  after,  Davy,  I  married  my  Isabella  under  his 
puritanical  nose,  at  the  chapel  across  the  way  ;  and  the  bit  of 
spite  in  it — bedad  ! — it  was  like  mustard  to  beef.  (Pish  !  what  am 


CHAP,  i  YOUTH  131 

I  about !)  And  I  set  up  shop  almost  next  door  to  the  chapel,  and 
took  the  trade  out  of  his  mouth,  and  enjoyed  myself  finely  for 
six  months.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he  gave  out  that  the  neigh- 
bourhood was  too  "  low  "  for  him,  and  he  moved  up  town.  And 
though  I've  been  half  over  the  world  since,  I've  never  ceased  to 
keep  an  eye  on  him.  I've  had  a  finger  in  more  pies  of  his  than 
he  thinks  for  ! ' 

And  Daddy  drew  himself  up,  pressing  his  hands  against  his 
sides,  his  long  frame  swelling  out,  as  it  seemed,  with  sudden 
passion.  David  watched  him  with  a  look  half  sympathetic,  half 
satirical. 

'  I  don't  see  that  he  did  you  much  harm,  Daddy.' 

'  Harm  ! '  said  the  little  man,  irascibly.  '  Harm  !  I  must  say 
you're  uncommon  slow  at  gripping  a  situation,  Davy.  I'd  my 
wife's  score  to  settle,  too,  I  tell  you,  as  well  as  my  own.  He'd 
sat  on  his  poor  easy-going  sister  till  she  hadn't  a  feature  left.  I 
knew  he  had.  He's  made  up  of  all  the  mean  vices — and  at  the 
same  time,  if  you  were  to  hear  him  at  a  prayer  meeting,  you'd 
think  that  since  Enoch  went  up  to  heaven  the  wrong  way,  the 
world  didn't  happen  to  have  been  blessed  with  another  saint  to 
match  Tom  Purcell.'  And,  stirred  by  his  own  eloquence,  Daddy 
looked  down  frowning  on  the  youth  before  him. 

'  What  made  you  give  up  the  book-trade,  Daddy  ? '  asked 
David,  with  a  smile. 

It  was  like  the  pricking  of  a  bladder.  Daddy  collapsed  in  a 
moment.  Sitting  down  again,  he  began  to  arrange  his  coat 
elaborately  over  his  knees,  as  though  to  gain  time. 

'David,  you're  an  inquisitive  varmint,'  he  said  at  last,  looking 
up  askance  at  his  companion.  '  Some  one's  been  telling  you  tales, 
by  the  look  of  you.  Look  here — if  Tom  Purcell's  a  blathering 
hypocrite,  that  is  not  the  same  thing  precisely  as  saying  that 
Adrian  O'Connor  Lomax  is  a  perfect  specimen  of  the  domestic 
virtues.  Never  you  mind,  my  boy,  what  made  me  give  up  book- 
selling. I've  chucked  so  many  things  overboard  since,  that  its 
hardly  worth  inquiring.  Try  any  trade  you  like  and  Daddy  '11 
be  able  to  give  you  some  advice  in  it — that's  the  only  thing  that 
concerns  you.  Well  now,  tell  me — '  and  he  turned  round  and 
put  his  elbows  on  the  table,  leaning  over  to  David — l  When  are 
you  coming  away,  and  what  are  your  prospects  ? ' 

'  I  told  you  about  a  fortnight  would  see  it  out,  Daddy.  And 
there's  a  little  shop  in —  But  it's  no  good,  Daddy.  You  can't 
keep  secrets.' 

The  old  man  turned  purple,  drew  himself  up,  and  looked 
fiercely  at  David  from  behind  his  spectacles.  But  in  a  second 
his  mood  changed  and  he  stretched  his  hand  slowly  out  across 
the  table. 

'  On  the  honour  of  a  Lomax,'  he  said  solemnly. 

There  was  a  real  dignity  about  the  absurd  action  which  melted 
David.  He  shook  the  hand  and  repented  him.  Leaning  over  he 
whispered  some  information  in  Daddy's  ear.  Daddy  beamed. 


132  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

And  in  the  midst  of  the  superfluity  of  nods  and  winks  that  fol- 
lowed David  called  for  his  bill. 

The  action  recalled  Daddy  to  his  own  affairs,  and  he  looked 
on  complacently  while  David  paid. 

'  Ton  my  word,  Davy,  I  can  hardly  yet  believe  in  my  own 
genius.  Where  else,  my  boy,  in  this  cotton-spinning  hole,  would 
you  find  a  dinner  like  that  for  sixpence  ?  Am  I  a  benefactor  to 
the  species,  sir,  or  am  I  not  ? " 

'  Looks  like  it,  Daddy,  by  the  help  of  Miss  Dora.' 

'  Aye,  aye,'  said  the  old  man  testily, — '  I'll  not  deny  that 
Dora's  useful  to  the  business.  But  the  inspiration,  Davy,  's  all 
mine.  You  want  genius,  my  boy,  to  make  a  tomfool  of  yourself 
like  this,'  and  he  looked  himself  proudly  up  and  down.  '  Twenty 
customers  a  week  come  here  for  nothing  in  the  world  but  to  see 
what  new  rigs  Daddy  may  be  up  to.  The  invention — the  happy 
ideas,  man,  I  throw  into  one  day  of  this  place  would  stock  twenty 
ordinary  businesses.' 

'All  the  same,  Daddy,  I've  tasted  Welsh  rabbit  before,'  said 
David  drily,  putting  on  his  hat. 

'  I  scorn  your  remark,  sir.  It  argues  a  poorly  furnished 
mind.  Show  me  anything  new  in  this  used-up  world,  eh  ?  but 
for  the  name  and  the  dishing  up — Well,  good-bye,  Davy,  and 
good  luck  to  you  ! ' 

David  made  his  way  across  Hanging  Ditch  to  a  little  row  of 
houses  bearing  the  baldly  appropriate  name  of  Half  Street.  It 
ran  along  the  eastern  side  of  the  Cathedral  close.  First  came 
the  houses,  small,  irregular,  with  old  beams  and  projections  here 
and  there,  then  a  paved  footway,  then  the  railings  round  the 
close.  In  full  view  of  the  windows  of  the  street  rose  the  six- 
teenth-century church  which  plays  as  best  it  can  the  part  of 
Cathedral  to  Manchester.  Round  it  stretched  a  black  and  desolate 
space  paved  with  tombstones.  Not  a  blade  of  grass  broke  the 
melancholy  of  those  begrimed  and  time-worn  slabs.  The  rain 
lay  among  them  in  pools,  squalid  buildings  overlooked  them,  and 
the  church,  with  its  manifest  inadequacy  to  a  fine  site  and  a  great 
city,  did  but  little  towards  overcoming  the  mean  and  harsh  im- 
pression made — on  such  a  day  especially — by  its  surroundings. 

David  opened  the  door  of  a  shop  about  halfway  up  the  row. 
A  bell  rang  sharply,  and  as  he  shut  the  outer  door  behind  him, 
another  at  the  back  of  the  shop  opened  hastily,  and  a  young  girl 
came  in. 

'  Mr.  Grieve,  father's  gone  out  to  Eccles  to  see  some  books  a 
gentleman  wants  him  to  buy.  If  Mr.  Stephens  comes,  you're  to 
tell  him  father's  found  him  two  or  three  more  out  of  the  list  he 
sent.  You  know  where  all  his  books  are  put  together,  if  he  wants 
to  see  them,  father  says.' 
•  '  Yes,  thank  you,  Miss  Purcell,  I  do.  No  other  message  ? ' 

'  No.'  The  speaker  lingered.  '  What  time  do  we  start  for  the 
music  to-night  ?  But  you'll  be  down  to  tea  ? ' 


CHAP.  I  YOUTH  133 

'  Certainly,  if  you  and  Miss  Dora  don't  want  it  to  yourselves.' 
The  speaker  smiled.  He  was  leaning  on  the  counter,  while  the 
girl  stood  behind  it. 

'  Oh  dear,  no  ! '  said  Miss  Purcell  with  a  half-pettish  gesture. 
'  I  don't  know  what  to  talk  to  Dora  about  now.  She  thinks  of 
nothing  but  St.  Damian's  and  her  work.  It's  worse  than  father. 
And,  of  course,  1  know  she  hasn't  much  opinion  of  me.  Indeed, 
she's  always  telling  me  so — well,  not  exactly — but  she  lets  me 
guess  fast  enough.' 

The  speaker  put  up  two  small  hands  to  straighten  some  of 
the  elaborate  curls  and  twists  with  which  her  pretty  head  was 
crowned.  There  was  a  little  consciousness  in  the  action.  The 
thought  of  her  cousin  had  evidently  brought  with  it  the 
thought  of  some  of  those  things  of  which  the  stern  Dora  dis- 
approved. 

David  looked  at  the  brown  hair  and  the  slim  fingers  as  he  was 
meant  to  look  at  them.  Yet  in  his  smiling  good  humour  there 
was  not  a  trace  of  bashfulness  or  diffidence.  He  was  perfectly  at 
rtis  ease,  with  something  of  a  proud  self-reliant  consciousness  in 
every  movement  ;  nothing  in  his  manner  could  have  reminded  a 
spectator  of  the  traditional  apprentice  making  timid  love  to  his 
master's  daughter. 

'I've  seen  you  stand  up  to  her  though,'  he  said  laughing. 
'  It's  like  all  pious  people.  Doesn't  it  strike  you  as  odd  that  they 
should  never  be  content  with  being  pious  for  themselves  ? ' 

He  looked  at  her  with  bright  sarcastic  eyes. 

'  Oh,  I  know  what  you  mean  ! '  she  said  with  an  instant  change 
of  tone  ;  '  I  didn't  mean  anything  of  the  sort.  I  think  it's 
shocking  of  you  to  go  to  that  place  on  Sundays — so  there,  Mr. 
Grieve.' 

She  threw  herself  back  defiantly  against  the  books  which 
walled  the  shop,  her  arms  folded  before  her.  The  attitude 
showed  the  long  throat,  the  rounded  bust,  and  the  slender  waist 
compressed  with  some  evident  rigour  into  a  close-fitting  brown 
dress.  That  Miss  Purcell  thought  a  great  deal  of  the  fashion  of 
her  hair,  the  style  of  her  bodices,  and  the  size  of  her  waist  was 
clear  ;  that  she  was  conscious  of  thinking  about  them  to  good 
purpose  was  also  plain.  But  on  the  whole  the  impression  of 
artificiality,  of  something  over-studied  and  over-done  which  the 
first  sight  of  her  generally  awakened,  was  soon,  as  a  rule,  lost  in 
another  more  attractive — in  one  of  light,  tripping  youth,  per- 
fectly satisfied  with  itself  and  with  the  world. 

'  I  don't  think  you  know  much  about  the  place,'  he  said 
quietly,  still  smiling. 

She  flushed,  her  foolish  little  sense  of  natural  superiority  to 
'  the  assistant '  outraged  again,  as  it  had  been  outraged  already 
a  hundred  times  since  she  and  David  Grieve  had  met. 

'  I  know  quite  as  much  as  anybody  need  know — any  respect- 
able person — '  she  maintained  angrily.  '  It's  a  low,  disgraceful 
place — and  they  talk  wicked  nonsense.  Everyone  says  so.  It 


134  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

doesn't  matter  a  bit  where  Uncle  Lomax  goes — he's  mad — but  it 
is  a  shame  he  should  lead  other  people  astray.' 

She  was  much  pleased  with  her  own  harangue,  and  stood 
there  frowning  on  him,  her  sharp  little  chin  in  the  air,  one  foot 
beating  the  ground. 

'Well,  yes,  really,'  said  David  in  a  reflective  tone;  'one 
would  think  Miss  Dora  had  her  hands  full  at  home,  without — ' 

He  looked  up,  significantly,  smiling.  Lucy  Purcell  was  enraged 
with  him — with  his  hypocritical  sympathy  as  to  her  uncle's  mis- 
doings— his  avoidance  of  his  own  crime. 

'It's  not  uncle  at  all,  it's  you  ! '  she  cried,  with  more  logic 
than  appeared.  '  I  tell  you,  Mr.  Grieve,  father  won't  stand  it.' 

The  young  man  drew  himself  up  from  the  counter. 

'  No,'  he  said  with  great  equanimity,  '  I  suppose  not.' 

And  taking  up  a  parcel  of  books  from  the  counter  he  turned 
away.  Lucy,  flurried  and  pouting,  called  after  him. 

'  Mr.  Grieve  ! ' 

'Yes.' 

'  I— I  didn't  mean  it.  I  hope  you  won't  go.  I  know  father's 
hard.  He's  hard  enough  with  me.' 

And  she  raised  her  hands  to  her  flushed  face.  David  was 
terribly  afraid  she  was  going  to  cry.  Several  times  since  the 
orphan  girl  of  seventeen  had  arrived  from  school  three  months 
before  to  take  her  place  in  her  father's  house,  had  she  been  on 
the  point  of  confiding  her  domestic  woes  to  David  Grieve.  But 
though  under  the  terms  of  his  agreement  with  her  father,  which 
included  one  meal  in  the  back  parlour,  the  assistant  and  she 
were  often  thrown  together,  he  had  till  now  instinctively  held 
her  aloof.  His  extraordinary  good  looks  and  masterful  energetic 
ways  had  made  an  impression  on  her  schoolgirl  mind  from  the 
beginning.  But  for  him  she  had  no  magnetism  whatever.  The 
little  self-conceited  creature  knew  it,  or  partially  knew  it,  and 
smarted  under  it. 

Now,  he  was  just  beginning  an  awkward  sentence,  when  there 
was  a  sound  at  the  outer  door.  With  another  look  at  him,  half 
shy,  half  appealing,  Lucy  fled.  Conscious  of  a  distinct  feeling 
of  relief,  David  went  to  attend  to  the  customer. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  customer  was  soon  content  and  went  out  again  into  the 
rain.  David  mounted  a  winding  iron  stair  which  connected  the 
downstairs  shop  with  an  upper  room  in  which  a  large  proportion 
of  the  books  were  stored.  It  was  a  long,  low,  rambling  place 
made  by  throwing  together  all  the  little  bits  of  rooms  on  the 
first  floor  of  the  old  house.  One  corner  of  it  had  a  special 
attraction  for  David.  It  was  the  corner  where,  ranged  partly  on 
the  floor,  partly  on  the  shelves  which  ran  under  the  windows, 


CHAP,  ii  YOUTH  135 

lay  the  collection  of  books  that  Purcell  had  been  making  for  his 
customer,  Mr.  Stephens. 

Out  of  that  collection  Purcell's  assistant  had  extracted  a  very 
varied  entertainment.  In  the  first  place  it  had  amused  him  to 
watch  the  laborious  pains  and  anxiety  with  which  his  pious 
employer  had  gathered  together  the  very  sceptical  works  of 
which  Mr.  Stephens  was  in  want,  showing  a  knowledge  of  con- 
tents, and  editions,  and  out-of-the-way  profanities,  under  the 
stimulus  of  a  paying  customer,  which  drew  many  a  sudden  laugh 
from  David  when  he  was  left  to  think  of  it  in  private. 

In  the  next  place  the  books  themselves  had  been  a  perpetual 
feast  to  him  for  weeks,  enjoyed  all  the  more  keenly  because  of 
the  secrecy  in  which  it  had  to  be  devoured.  The  little  gathering 
represented  with  fair  completeness  the  chief  books  of  the  French 
'  philosophers,'  both  in  the  original  French,  and  in  those  English 
translations  of  which  so  plentiful  a  crop  made  its  appearance 
during  the  fifty  years  before  and  after  1800.  There,  for  instance, 
lay  the  seventy  volumes  of  Voltaire.  Close  by  was  an  imperfect 
copy  of  the  Encyclopaedia,  which  Mr.  Stephens  was  getting  cheap  ; 
on  the  other  side  a  motley  gathering  of  Diderot  and  Rousseau ; 
while  Holbach's  'System  of  Nature,'  and  Helvetius  'On  the 
Mind,'  held  their  rightful  place  among  the  rest. 

Through  these  books,  then,  which  had  now  been  on  the  pre- 
mises for  some  time — Mr.  Stephens  being  a  person  of  uncertain 
domicile,  and  unable  as  yet  to  find  them  a  home — David  had  been 
freely  ranging.  Whenever  Pui'cell  was  out  of  the  way  and  cus- 
tomers were  slack,  he  invariably  found  his  way  to  this  spot  in  the 
upper  room.  There,  with  his  elbows  on  the  top  of  the  bookcase 
which  ran  under  the  window,  and  a  book  in  front  of  him — or 
generally  two,  the  original  French  and  a  translation — he  had 
read  Voltaire's  tales,  a  great  deal  of  the  Encyclopaedia,  a  certain 
amount  of  Diderot,  for  whom  he  cherished  a  passionate  admira- 
tion, and  a  much  smaller  smattering  of  Rousseau.  At  the  present 
moment  he  was  grappling  with  the  'Dictionnaire  Philosophique.' 
and  the  'Systeme  de  la  Nature,'  fortified  in  both  cases  by  English 
versions. 

The  gloom  of  the  afternoon  deepened,  and  the  increasing  r;nn 
had  thinned  the  streets  so  much  that  during  a  couple  of  hours 
David  had  but  three  summonses  from  below  to  attend  to.  For 
the  rest  of  the  time  he  was  buried  in  the  second  volume  of  the 
'Dictionnaire  Philosophique,' now  skipping  freely,  now  chewing 
and  digesting,  his  eyes  fixed  vacantly  on  the  darkening  church 
outside.  Above  all,  the  article  on  Contradictions  had  absorbed 
and  delighted  him.  There  are  few  tones  in  themselves  so  fasci- 
nating to  the  nascent  literary  sense  as  this  mock  humility  tone  of 
Voltaire's.  And  in  David's  case  all  that  passionate  sense  of  a 
broken  bubble  and  a  scattered  dream,  which  had  haunted  him  so 
long  after  he  left  Kinder,  had  entered  into  and  helped  forward 
his  infatuation  with  his  new  masters.  They  brought  him  an 
indescribable  sense  of  freedom — omniscience  almost. 


136  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

For  instance  :- 

'  We  must  carefully  distinguish  in  all  writings,  and  especially  in 
the  sacred  books,  between  real  and  apparent  contradictions.  Ventur 
ous  critics  have  supposed  a  contradiction  existed  in  that  passage  of 
Scripture  which  narrates  how  Moses  changed  all  the  waters  of  Egypt 
into  blood,  and  how  immediately  afterwards  the  magicians  of  Pharaoh 
did  the  same  thing,  the  book  of  Exodus  allowing  no  interval  at  all 
between  the  miracle  of  Moses  and  the  magical  operation  of  the  en- 
chanters. Certainly  it  seems  at  first  sight  impossible  that  these 
magicians  should  change  into  blood  what  was  already  blood ;  but 
this  difficulty  may  be  avoided  by  supposing  that  Moses  had  allowed 
the  waters  to  reassume  their  proper  nature,  in  order  to  give  time  to 
Pharaoh  to  recover  himself.  This  supposition  is  all  the  more  plau- 
sible, seeing  that  the  text,  if  it  does  not  favour  it  expressly,  is  not 
opposed  to  it. 

'  The  same  sceptics  ask  how  when  all  the  horses  had  been  killed 
by  the  hail  in  the  sixth  plague  Pharaoh  could  pursue  the  Jews  with 
cavalry.  But  this  contradiction  is  not  even  apparent,  because  the 
hail,  which  killed  all  the  horses  in  the  fields,  could  not  fall  upon 
those  which  were  in  the  stables.' 

And  so  on  through  a  long  series  of  paragraphs,  leading  at 
last  to  matters  specially  dear  to  the  wit  of  Voltaire,  the  contra- 
dictions between  St.  Luke  and  St.  Matthew — in  the  story  of  the 
census  of  Quirinus,  of  the  Magi,  of  the  massacre  of  the  Innocents, 
and  what  not — and  culminating  in  this  innocent  conclusion: — 

'  After  all  it  is  enough  that  God  should  have  deigned  to  reveal 
to  us  the  principal  mysteries  of  the  faith,  and  that  He  should 
have  instituted  a  Church  in  the  course  of  time  to  explain  them.  All 
these  contradictions,  so  often  and  so  bitterly  brought  up  against  the 
Gospels,  are  amply  noticed  by  the  wicost  commentators  ;  far  from 
harming  each  other,  one  explains  another ;  they  lend  each  other  a 
mutual  support,  both  in  the  concordance  and  in  the  harmony  of  the 
four  Gospels.' 

David  threw  back  his  head  with  a  laugh  which  came  from  the 
very  depths  of  him.  Then,  suddenly,  he  was  conscious  of  the 
church  standing  sombrely  without,  spectator  as  it  seemed  of  his 
thoughts  and  of  his  mirth.  Instantly  his  youth  met  the  challenge 
by  a  rise  of  passionate  scorn  !  What!  a  hundred  years  since 
Voltaire,  and  mankind  still  went  on  believing  in  all  these  follies 
and  fables,  in  the  ten  plagues,  in  Balaam's  ass,  in  the  walls  of 
Jericho,  in  miraculous  births,  and  Magi,  and  prophetic  stars  ! — 
in  everything  that  the  mockery  of  the  eighteenth  century  had 
slain  a  thousand  times  over.  Ah,  well ! — Voltaire  knew  as  well 
as  anybody  that  superstition  is  perennial,  insatiable — a  disease 
and  weakness  of  the  human  mind  which  seems  to  be  inherent 
and  ineradicable.  And  there  rose  in  the  boy's  memory  lines  he 
had  opened  upon  that  morning  in  a  small  Elizabethan  folio  he 


CHAP,  ii  YOUTH  137 

had  been  cataloguing  with  much  pains  as  a  rarity — lines  which 
had  stuck  in  his  mind — 

Vast  superstition  !  glorious  style  of  weakness, 
Sprung  from  the  deep  disquiet  of  man's  passion 
To  dissolution  and  despair  of  Nature  ! — 

He  flung  them  out  at  the  dark  mass  of  building  opposite,  as 
though  he  were  his  namesake  flinging  at  Goliath.  Only  a  few 
months  before  that  great  church  had  changed  masters— had 
passed  from  the  hands  of  an  aristocratic  and  inaccessible  bishop 
of  the  old  school  into  those  of  a  man  rich  in  all  modern  ideas  and 
capacities,  full  of  energy  and  enthusiasm,  a  scholar  and  adminis- 
trator both.  And  he  believed  all  those  absurdities,  David  wanted 
to  know?  Impossible!  No  honest  man  could,  thought  the  lad 
defiantly,  with  the  rising  colour  of  crude  and  vehement  feeling, 
when  his  attention  had  been  once  challenged,  and  he  had  deve- 
loped mind  enough  to  know  what  the  challenge  meant. 

Except,  perhaps,  Uncle  Reuben  and  Dora  Loniax,  and  people 
like  that.  He  stood  thinking  and  staring  out  of  window,  one 
idea  leading  to  another.  The  thought  of  Reuben  brought  with  it 
a  certain  softening  of  mood — the  softening  of  memory  and  old 
association.  Yes,  he  would  like  to  see  Uncle  Reuben  again — ex- 
plain to  him,  perhaps,  that  old  story — so  old,  so  distant ! — of  his 
running  away.  Well,  he  ivould  see  him  again,  as  soon  as  he  got 
a  place  of  his  own,  which  couldn't  be  long  now,  whether  Purcell 
gave  him  the  sack  or  not.  Instinctively,  he  felt  for  that  inner 
pocket,  which  held  his  purse  and  his  savings-bank  book.  Yes,  he 
was  near  freedom  now,  whatever  happened  ! 

Then  it  occurred  to  him  that  it  was  unlucky  he  should  have 
stumbled  across  Mr.  Ancrum  just  at  this  particular  juncture. 
The  minister,  of  course,  had  friends  at  Clough  End  still.  And 
he,  David,  didn't  want  Louie  down  upon  him  just  yet — not  just 
yet — for  a  month  or  two. 

Then  the  smile  which  had  begun  to  play  about  the  mouth  sud- 
denly broadened  into  a  merry  triumph.  When  Louie  knew  all 
about  him  and  his  contrivances  these  last  four  years,  wouldn't 
she  be  mad  !  If  she  were  to  appear  at  this  moment,  he  could  tell 
her  that  she  wore  a  pink  dress  at  the  '  wake  '  last  week, — when 
she  was  at  chapel  last, — what  young  men  were  supposed  to  be 
courting  her  since  the  summer,  and  a  number  of  other  interest- 
ing particulars — 

'  Mr.  Grieve  !     Tea  ! ' 

His  face  changed.  Reluctantly  shutting  his  book  and  putting 
it  into  its  place,  he  took  his  way  to  the  staircase. 

As  David  opened  the  swing  door  leading  to  the  Purcells'  par- 
lour at  the  back  of  the  shop  he  heard  Miss  Purcell  saying  in  a 
mournful  voice,  '  It's  no  good,  Dora ;  not  a  haporth  of  good. 
Father  won't  let  me.  I  might  as  well  have  gone  to  prison  as 
come  home.' 


138  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

The  assistant  emerged  into  the  bright  gaslight  of  the  little 
room  as  she  spoke'.  There  was  another  girl  sitting  beside  Lucy, 
who  got  up  with  a  shy  manner  and  shook  hands  with  him. 

'  Will  you  take  your  tea,  Mr.  Grieve  ? '  said  Lucy,  with  a  pet- 
tish sigh,  handing  it  to  him,  and  then  throwing  herself  vehe- 
mently back  in  her  hostess's  chair,  behind  the  tea-tray.  She  let 
her  hands  hang  over  the  arms  of  it — the  picture  of  discontent. 
The  gaslight  showed  her  the  possessor  of  bright  brown  eyes, 
under  fine  brows  slenderly  but  clearly  marked,  of  a  pink  and 
white  skin  slightly  freckled,  of  a  small  nose  quite  passable,  but 
no  ways  remarkable,  of  a  dainty  little  chin,  and  a  thin-lipped 
mouth,  slightly  raised  at  one  corner,  and  opening  readily  over 
some  irregular  but  very  white  teeth.  Except  for  the  eyes  and 
eyebrows  the  features  could  claim  nothing  much  in  the  way  of 
beauty.  Yet  at  this  moment  of  seventeen — thanks  to  her  clear 
colours,  her  small  thinness,  and  the  beautiful  hair  so  richly  piled 
about  her  delicate  head — Lucy  Purcell  was  undeniably  a  pretty 
girl,  and  since  her  ai'rival  in  Manchester  she  had  been  much 
more  blissfully  certain  of  the  fact  than  she  had  ever  succeeded  in 
being  while  she  was  still  under  the  repressive  roof  of  Miss  Pym's 
boarding-school  for  young  ladies,  Pestalozzi  House,  Blackburn. 

David  sat  down,  perceiving  that  something  had  gone  very 
wrong,  but  not  caring  to  inquire  into  it.  His  whole  interest  in 
the  Purcell  household  was.  in  fact,  dying  out.  He  would  not  be 
concerned  with  it  much  longer. 

So  that,  instead  of  investigating  Miss  Purcell's  griefs,  he 
asked  her  cousin  whether  it  had  not  come  on  to  rain.  The  girl 
opposite  replied  in  a  quiet,  musical  voice.  She  was  plainly 
dressed  in  a  black  hat  and  jacket ;  but  the  hat  had  a  little  bunch 
of  cowslips  to  light  it  up,  and  the  jacket  was  of  an  ordinary 
fashionable  cut.  There  was  nothing  particularly  noticeable  about 
the  face  at  first  sight,  except  its  soft  fairness  and  the  gentle 
steadfastness  of  the  eyes.  The  movements  were  timid,  the 
speech  often  hesitating.  Yet  the  impression  which,  on  a  first 
meeting,  this  timidity  was  apt  to  leave  on  a  spectator  was  very 
seldom  a  lasting  one.  David's  idea  of  Miss  Lomax,  for  instance, 
had  radically  changed  during  the  three  months  since  he  had 
made  acquaintance  with  her. 

Rain,  it  appeared,  had  begun,  and  there  must  be  umbrellas 
and  waterproofs  for  the  evening's  excursion.  As  the  two  others 
were  settling  at  what  time  David  Grieve  and  Lucy  should  call  for 
Dora  in  Market  Place,  Lucy  woke  up  from  a  dream,  and  broke 
in  upon  them. 

'  And,  Dora,  you  know,  I  could  have  worn  that  dress  with  the 
narrow  ribbons  I  showed  you  last  week.  It's  all  there — upstairs 
— in  the  cupboard — not  a  crease  in  it ! ' 

Dora  could  not  help  laughing,  and  the  laugh  sent  a  charming 
light  into  her  grey,  veiled  eyes.  The  tone  was  so  inexpressibly 
doleful,  the  manner  so  childish.  David  smiled  too,  and  his  eyes 
and  Dora's  met  in  a  sort  of  friendly  understanding— the  first 


CUAP.  ii  YOUTH  139 

time,  perhaps,  they  had  so  met.  Then  they  both  turned  them- 
selves to  the  task  of  consolation.  The  assistant  inquired  what 
was  the  matter. 

'  I  wanted  her  to  go  with  me  to  the  dance  at  the  Mechanics' 
Institute  next  week,'  said  Dora.  'Mrs.  Alderman  Head  would 
have  taken  us  both.  It's  very  nice  and  respectable.  I  didn't 
think  uncle  would  mind.  But  Lucy's  sure  he  will.' 

'  Sure  !  Of  course  I'm  sure,'  said  Lucy  sharply.  '  I've  heard 
him  talk  about  dancing  in  a  way  to  make  anybody  sick.  If  he 
only  knew  all  the  dancing  we  had  at  Pestalozzi  House  ! ' 

'  Does  he  think  all  dancing  wrong  ? '  inquired  David. 

'  Yes— unless  it's  David  dancing  before  the  Ark,  or  some  such 
nonsense,'  replied  Lucy,  with  the  same  petulant  gloom. 

David  laughed  out.  Then  he  fell  into  a  brown  study,  one 
hand  playing  with  his  tea-cup,  an  irrepressible  smile  still  curving 
about  his  mouth.  Dora,  observing  him  across  the  table,  could 
not  but  remember  other  assistants  of  Uncle  Purcell  whom  she 
had  seen  sitting  in  that  same  place,  and  the  airs  which  Miss  Pur- 
cell  in  her  rare  holidays  had  given  herself  towards  those  earlier 
young  men.  And  now,  this  young  man,  whenever  Purcell  him- 
self was  out  of  the  way,  was  master  of  the  place.  Anyone  could 
see  that,  so  long  as  he  was  there,  Lucy  was  sensitively  conscious 
of  him  in  all  that  she  said  or  did. 

She  did  not  long  endure  his  half-mocking  silence  now. 

'You  see,  Dora,'  she  began  again,  with  an  angry  glance 
towards  him,  '  father's  worse  than  ever  just  now.  He's  been  so 
aggravated.' 

'  Yes,'  said  Dora  timidly.  She  perfectly  understood  what 
was  meant,  but  she  shrank  from  pursuing  the  subject.  But 
David  looked  up. 

'  I  should  be  very  sorry,  I'm  sure,  Miss  Purcell,  to  get  in  your 
way  at  all,  or  cause  you  any  unpleasantness,  if  that's  what  you 
mean.  I  don't  think  you'll  be  annoyed  with  me  long.' 

He  spoke  with  a  boyish  exaggerated  dignity.  It  became  him, 
however,  for  his  fine  and  subtle  physique  somehow  supported 
and  endorsed  it. 

Both  the  girls  started.  Lucy  looked  suddenly  as  miserable 
as  she  had  before  looked  angry.  But  in  her  confused  state  of 
feeling  she  renewed  her  attack. 

'I  don't  understand  anything  about  it,'  she  said,  with  plain- 
tive incoherence.  '  Only  I  can't  thiiik  why  people  should  always 
be  making  disturbances.  Dora  !  Doesn't  everybody  you  know 
think  it  wicked  to  go  to  the  Hall  of  Science  ? ' 

She  drew  herself  up  peremptorily.  David  resumed  the  half 
smiling,  half  meditative  attitude  which  had  provoked  her  before. 
Dora  looked  from  one  to  the  other,  a  pure  bright  colour  rising 
in  her  cheek. 

'  I  don't  know  anything  about  that,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 
'  I  don't  think  that  would  matter,  Lucy.  But,  oh,  I  do  wish 
father  wouldn't  go — and  Mr.  Grieve  wouldn't  go.' 


140  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

Her  voice  and  hand  shook.  Lucy  looked  triumphantly  at 
David.  Instinctively  she  realised  that,  especially  of  late,  David 
had  come  to  feel  more  respectfully  towards  Dora  than  she  had 
ever  succeeded  in  making  him  feel  towards  herself.  In  the 
beginning  of  their  acquaintance  he  had  often  launched  into 
argument  with  Dora  about  religious  matters,  especially  about 
the  Ritualistic  practices  in  which  she  delighted.  The  lad,  over- 
flowing with  his  Voltaire  and  d'Holbach,  had  not  been  able  to 
foi'bear,  and  had  apparently  taken  a  mischievous  pleasure  in 
shocking  a  bigot — as  he  had  originally  conceived  Lucy  Purcell's 
cousin  to  be.  The  discussion,  indeed,  had  not  gone  very  far. 
The  girl's  horror  and  his  own  sense  of  his  position  and  its  diffi- 
culties had  checked  them  in  the  germ.  Moreover,  as  has  been 
said,  his  conception  of  Dora  had  gradually  changed  on  further 
acquaintance.  As  for  her.  she  had  now  for  a  long  time  avoided 
arguing  with  him,  which  made  her  outburst  on  the  present 
occasion  the  more  noticeable. 

He  looked  up  quickly. 

'  Miss  Lomax,  how  do  you  suppose  one  makes  up  one's  mind 
— either  about  religion  or  anything  else  ?  Isn't  it  by  hearing 
both  sides  ? ' 

'  Oh,  no — no  ! '  she  said,  shrinking.  '  Religion  isn't  like 
anything  else.  It's  by — by  growing  up  into  it — by  thinking 
about  it — and  doing  what  the  Church  tells  you.  You  come  to 
know  it's  true.' 

That  the  Magi  and  Balaam's  ass  are  true  !  What  folly  !  But 
somehow  even  his  youthful  ardour  could  not  say  it,  so  full  of 
pure  and  tremulous  pain  was  the  gaze  fixed  upon  him.  And, 
indeed,  he  had  no  time  for  any  answer,  for  she  had  just  spoken 
when  the  bell  of  the  outer  door  sounded,  and  a  step  came  rapidly 
through  the  shop. 

'  Father  ! '  said  Lucy,  lifting  the  lid  of  the  teapot  in  a  great 
hurry.  '  Oh,  I  wonder  if  the  tea's  good  enough.' 

She  was  stirring  it  anxiously  with  a  spoon,  wrhen  Purcell 
entered,  a  tall  heavily  built  man,  with  black  hair,  a  look  of 
command,  and  a  step  which  shook  the  little  back  room  as  he 
descended  into  it.  He  touched  Dora's  hand  with  a  pompous 
politeness,  and  then  subsided  into  his  chair  opposite  Lucy,  com- 
plaining about  the  weather,  and  demanding  tea,  which  his 
daughter  gave  him  with  a  timid  haste,  looking  to  see  whether  he 
were  satisfied  as  he  raised  the  first  spoonful  to  his  lips. 

'  Anything  worth  buying?'  said  David  to  his  employer.  He 
was  leaning  back  in  his  chair,  with  his  arm  round  the  back  of 
another.  Again  Dora  was  reminded  by  contrast  of  some  of  the 
nervous  lads  she  had  seen  in  that  room  before,  scarcely  daring 
to  eat  their  tea  under  Purcell's  eye,  flying  to  cut  him  bread,  or 
pass  him  the  sugar. 

'  No,'  said  Purcell  curtly. 

'  And  a  great  price,  I  suppose  ?' 

Purcell  looked  up.     Apparently  the  ease  of  the  young  man's 


CHAP.  II  YOUTH  141 

tone  and  attitude  put  the  finishing  stroke  to  an  inward  process 
already  far  advanced. 

'The  price,  I  conceive,  is  my  business,'  he  said,  in  his  most 
overbearing  manner.  '  When  you  have  to  pay,  it  will"  be  yours.' 

David  flushed,  without,  however,  changing  his  position,  and 
Lucy  made  a  sudden  commotion  among  the  teacups. 

'  Father,'  she  said,  with  a  hurried  agitation  which  hardly 
allowed  her  to  pick  up  the  cup  she  had  thrown  over,  '  Dora  and 
I  want  to  speak  to  you.  You  mustn't  talk  business  at  tea.  Oh, 
I  know  you  won't  let  me  go  ;  but  I  should  like  it,  and  Dora's 
come  to  ask.  I  shouldn't  want  a  new  dress,  and  it  will  be  'most 
respectable,  everyone  says  ;  and  I  did  learn  dancing  at  school, 
though  you  didn't  know  it.  Miss  Georgina  said  it  was  stuff  and 
nonsense,  and  I  must — ' 

'  What  is  she  talking  about  ? '  said  Purcell  to  Dora,  with  an 
angry  glance  at  Lucy. 

'  I  want  to  take  her  to  a  dance,'  said  Dora  quietly,  'if  you 
would  let  her  come.  There's  one  at  the  Mechanics'  Institute  next 
week,  given  by  the  Unicorn  benefit  society.  Mrs.  Alderman  Head 
said  I  might  go  with  her,  and  Lucy  too  if  you'll  let  her  come. 
I've  got  a  ticket.' 

'  I'm  much  obliged  to  Mrs.  Alderman  Head,'  said  Purcell 
sarcastically.  '  Lucy  knows  very  well  what  I  think  of  an  un- 
christian and  immodest  amusement.  Other  people  must  decide 
according  to  their  conscience,  /judge  nobody.' 

At  this  point  David  got  up,  and  disappeared  into  the  shop. 

'Oh  yes,  you  do  judge,  uncle,'  cried  Dora,  roused  at  last, 
and  colouring.  '  You're  always  judging.  You  call  everything 
unchristian  you  don't  like,  whether  its  dancing,  or— or — early 
celebration,  or  organ  music,  or  altar-cloths.  But  you  can't  be 
always  right — nobody  can. ' 

Purcell  surveyed  her  with  a  grim  composure. 

'  If  you  suppose  I  make  any  pretence  to  be  infallible,  you  are 
quite  mistaken,'  he  said,  with  slow  solemnity — no  one  in  dis- 
claiming Papistry  could  have  been  more  the  Pope — '  I  leave  that 
to  your  priests  at  St.  Damian's,  Dora.  But  there  is  an  infallible 
guide,  both  for  you  and  for  me,  arid  that's  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
If  you  can  show  me  any  place  where  the  Bible  approves  of  pro- 
miscuous dancing  between  young  Christian  men  and  women,  or 
of  a  woman  exposing  her  person  for  admiration's  sake,  or  of  such 
vain  and  idle  talking  as  is  produced  by  these  entertainments,  I 
will  let  Lucy  go.  But  you  can't.  "Whose  adorning  let  it  not 
be—" ' 

And  he  quoted  the  Petrine  admonition  with  a  harsh  triumph- 
ant emphasis  on  every  syllable,  looking  hard  all  t  he  time  at  Dora, 
who  had  risen,  and  stood  confronting  him  in  a  tremor  of  impa- 
tience and  disagreement. 

'  Father  Russell — '  she  began  quickly,  then  changed  her  form 
of  expression — '  Mr.  Russell  says  you  can't  settle  things  by  just 
quoting  a  text.  The  Bible  has  to  be  explained,  he  says.' 


142  THE  HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

Purcell's  eyes  flamed.  He  launched  into  a  sarcastic  harangue, 
delivered  in  a  strong  thick  voice,  on  the  subject  of  '  Sacerdotalism,' 
'  priestly  arrogance,'  'lying  traditions,'  '  making  the  command  of 
God  of  no  effect,'  and  so  forth.  While  his  sermon  rolled  along, 
Dora  stood  nervously  tying  her  bonnet  strings,  or  buttoning  her 
gloves.  Her  heart  was  full  of  a  passionate  scorn.  Beside  the 
bookseller's  muscular  figure  and  pugnacious  head  she  saw  with 
her  mind's  eye  the  spare  forms  and  careworn  faces  of  the  young 
priests  at  St.  Damian's.  Outraged  by  this  loud-voiced  assurance, 
she  called  to  mind  the  gentleness,  the  suavity,  the  delicate  con- 
sideration for  women  which  obtained  among  her  friends. 

'There's  not  a  pin  to  choose,'  Purcell  wound  up,  brutally, 
'  between  you  and  that  young  infidel  in  there,'  and  he  jerked  his 
thumb  towards  the  shop.  '  It  all  comes  of  pride.  He's  bursting 
with  his  own  wisdom, — you  will  have  the  "Church"  and  won't 
have  the  Bible.  "What's  the  Church  ! — a  pack  of  sinners,  and  a 
million  sinners  are  no  better  than  one.' 

'Good-bye,  Lucy,'  said  Dora,  stooping  to  kiss  her  cousin,  and 
not  trusting  herself  to  speak.  '  Call  for  me  at  the  quarter.' 

Lucy  hardly  noticed  her  kiss,  she  sat  with  her  elbows  on  the 
table,  holding  her  little  chin  disconsolately,  something  very  like 
tears  in  her  eyes.  In  the  first  place,  she  was  reflecting  dolefully 
that  it  was  all  true — she  was  never  to  have  any  amusement  like 
other  girls — never  to  have  any  good  of  her  life  :  she  might  as  well 
be  a  nun  at  once.  In  the  second,  she  was  certain  her  father 
meant  to  send  young  Grieve  away,  and  the  prospect  drew  a  still 
darker  pall  over  a  prospect  dark  enough  in  all  conscience  before. 

Purcell  opened  the  door  for  Dora  more  punctiliously  than 
usual,  and  came  back  to  the  hearthrug  still  inflated  as  it  were 
with  his  own  eloquence.  Meanwhile  Lucy  was  washing  up  the 
tea  things.  The  little  servant  had  brought  her  a  bowl  of  water 
and  an  apron,  and  Lucy  was  going  gingerly  through  an  operation 
she  detested.  "Why  shouldn't  Mary  Ann  do  it?  What  was  the 
good  of  going  to  school  and  coming  back  with  Claribel's  songs 
and  Blumenthal's  Deux  Anges  lying  on  the  top  of  your  box, — 
with  a  social  education,  moreover,  so  advanced  that  the  dancing- 
mistress  had  invariably  made  you  waltz  alone  round  the  room  for 
the  edification  and  instruction  of  the  assembled  company, — if  all 
you  had  to  do  at  home  was  to  dust  and  wash  up,  and  die  with 
envy  of  girls  with  reprobate  fathers  ?  As  she  pondered  the 
question,  Lucy  began  to  handle  the  cups  with  a  more  and  more 
unfriendly  energy. 

'You'll  break  some  of  that  china,  Lucy  !'  said  Purcell,  at  last 
disturbed  in  his  thoughts.  '  What's  the  matter  with  you  ? ' 

'  Nothing  ! '  said  Lucy,  taking,  however,  a  saucer  from  the 
line  as  she  spoke  so  viciously  that  the  rest  of  them  slipped  with  a 
clatter  and  only  just  escaped  destruction. 

'Mind  what  you're  about,'  cried  Purcell  angrily,  fearing  for 
the  household  stuff  that  had  been  in  the  establishment  so  much 
longer  and  was  so  much  more  at  home  there  than  Lucy. 


CHAP,  ii  YOUTH  143 

'  I  know  what  it  is,'  he  said,  looking  at  her  severely,  while  his 
great  black  presence  seemed  to  fill  the  little  room.  '  You've  lost 
your  temper  because  I  refused  to  let  you  go  to  the  dance.' 

Lucy  was  silent  for  a  moment,  trying  to  contain  herself;  then 
she  broke  out  like  a  child,  throwing  down  her  apron,  and  feeling 
for  her  handkerchief. 

'  It's  too  bad — it's  too  bad — I'd  rather  be  Mary  Ann — she's  got 
friends,  and  evenings  out — and — and  parties  sometimes  ;  and  I 
see  nobody,  and  go  nowhere.  What  did  you  have  me  home  for 
at  all  ? ' 

And  she  sat  down  and  dried  her  eyes  piteously.  She  was  in 
real  distress,  but  she  liked  a  scene,  and  Purcell  knew  her  peculi- 
arities. He  surveyed  her  with  a  sort  of  sombre  indulgence. 

'  You're  a  vain  child  of  this  world,  Lucy.  If  I  didn't  keep  a 
look-out  on  you,  you'd  soon  go  rejoicing  down  the  broad  way. 
What  do  you  mean  about  amusements  ?  -There's  the  missionary 
tea  to-morrow  night,  and  the  magic-lantern  at  the  schools  on 
Saturday.' 

Lucy  gave  a  little  hysterical  laugh. 

'Well,'  said  Purcell  loudly,  'there'll  be  plenty  of  young 
people  there.  What  have  you  got  to  say  against  them  ? ' 

'  A  set  of  frights  and  gawks,'  said  Lucy,  sitting  bolt  upright 
in  a  state  of  flat  mutiny,  and  crushing  her  handkerchief  on  her 
knee  between  a  pair  of  trembling  hands.  '  The  way  they  do  their 
hair,  and  the  way  they  tie  their  ties,  and  the  way  they  put  a 
chair  for  you — it's  enough  to  make  one  faint.  At  the  Christmas 
treat  there  was  one  young  man  asked  me  to  trim  his  shirt-cuffs 
for  him  with  scissors  he  took  out  of  his  pocket.  I  told  him  I 
wasn't  his  nurse,  and  people  who  weren't  dressed  ought  to  stay 
at  home.  You  should  have  seen  how  he  and  his  sister  glared  at 
me  afterwards.  I  don't  care !  None  of  the  chapel  people  like 
me — I  know  they  don't,  and  I  don't  want  them  to,  and  I 
wouldn't  marry  one  of  them.  • 

The  gesture  of  Lucy's  curly  head  was  superb. 

'It  seems  to  me,'  said  Purcell  sarcastically,  '  that  what  you 
mostly  learnt  at  Blackburn  was  envy,  malice,  and  all  unchari- 
tableness.  As  to  marrying,  child,  the  less  you  think  of  it  for 
the  present  the  better,  till  you  get  more  sense.' 

But  the  eyes  which  studied  her  were  not  unkindly.  Purcell 
liked  this  slim  red  and  white  creature  who  belonged  to  him, 
whose  education  had  cost  him  hard  money  which  it  gave  him 
pleasure  to  reckon  up,  and  who  promised  now  to  provide  him 
with  a  fresh  field  for  the  management  and  the  coarse  moral 
experiment  which  he  loved.  She  would  be  restive  at  first,  but 
he  would  soon  break  her  in.  The  idea  that  under  her  folly  and 
childishness  she  might  possibly  inherit  some  of  his  own  tenacity 
never  occurred  to  him. 

'  I  can't  imagine,'  said  Lucy  inconsequently,  with  eyes  once 
more  swimming,  '  why  you  can't  let  me  do  what  Dora  does' ! 
She's  much  better  than  I  am.  She's  a  saint,  she  is.  Sh«'« 


144  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

always  going  to  church  ;  she's  always  doing  things  for  poor 
people  ;  she  never  thinks  about  herself,  or  whether  she's  pretty, 
or —  "Why  shouldn't  I  dance  if  she  does  ? ' 

Purcell  laughed. 

'  Aye  ! '  he  said  grimly, '  that's  the  Papistical  way  all  over.  So 
many  services,  so  much  fasting,  so  much  money,  so  much 
knocking  under  to  your  priest,  so  much  "church  work" — and 
who  cares  a  brass  farthing  what  you  do  with  the  rest  of  your 
time  ?  Do  as  I  tell  you,  and  dance  away !  But  I  tell  you, 
Christianity  wants  a  new  heart ! ' 

And  the  bookseller  looked  at  his  daughter  with  a  frowning 
severity.  Conversation  of  this  kind  was  his  recreation,  his 
accomplishment,  so  to  speak.  He  had  been  conducting  a  difficult 
negotiation  all  day  of  the  diamond-cut-diamond  order,  and  was 
tired  out  and  disgusted  by  the  amount  of  knowledge  of  books 
which  even  a  gentleman  may  possess.  But  here  was  compensa- 
tion. A  warm  hearthrug,  an  unwilling  listener,  and  this  sense 
of  an  incomparable  soundness  of  view, — he  wanted  nothing 
more  to  revive  him,  unless,  indeed,  it  were  a  larger  audience. 

As  for  Lucy,  as  she  looked  up  at  her  father,  even  her  childish 
intelligence  rose  to  a  sense  of  absurdity.  As  if  Dora  hadn't  a 
new  heart ;  as  if  Dora  thought  it  was  enough  to  go  to  church 
and  give  sixpences  in  the  offertory  ! 

But  her  father  overawed  her.  She  had  been  left  motherless 
at  ten  years  old,  and  brought  up  since  away  from  home,  except 
for  holidays.  At  the  bottom  of  her  she  was  quite  conscious  that 
she  knew  nothing  at  all  about  this  big  contemptuous  person,  who 
ordered  her  about  and  preached  to  her,  and  never  let  himself  be 
kissed  and  played  with  and  coaxed  as  other  girls'  fathers  did. 

So  she  went  on  with  her  washing  up  in  a  crushed  silence,  very 
sorry  for  herself  in  a  vague  passionate  way,  the  corners  of  her 
month  drooping.  Purcell  too  fell  into  a  reverie,  the  lower  jaw 
pushed  forward,  one  hand  playing  with  the  watch-chain  which 
adorned  his  black  suit. 

'  Did  you  give  Grieve  that  message  ? '  he  asked  at  last. 

Lucy,  still  sulky,  nodded  in  reply. 

'  What  time  did  he  come  in  from  dinner  ?' 

'  On  the  stroke  of  the  half-hour,'  said  Lucy  quickly.  '  I  think 
he  keeps  time  better  than  anybody  you  ever  had,  father.' 

4  Insolent  young  whelp  ! '  said  Purcell  in  a  slow,  deliberate 
voice.  '  He  was  at  that  place  again  yesterday.' 

'  Yes,  I  know  he  was,'  said  Lucy,  with  evident  agitation.  '  I 
told  him  he  ought  to  have  been  ashamed.' 

'  Oh,  you  talked  to  him,  did  you  ?  What  business  had  you  to 
do  that,  I  wonder  ?  Well,  what  did  he  say  ?' 

4  He  said — well,  I  don't  know  what  he  said.  He  don't  seem  to 
think  it  matters  to  anybody  where  he  goes  on  Sunday  ! ' 

4  Oh,  indeed — don't  he  ?  I'll  show  him  some  cause  to  doubt 
the  truth  of  that  proposition,'  said  Purcell  ponderously  ;  4  or  I'll 
know  the  reason  why.' 


CHAP,  ii  YOUTH  145 

Lucy  looked  unhappy,  and  said  nothing  for  a  minute  or  two. 
Then  she  began  insistently,  '  Well,  does  it  matter  to  you  ?' 

This  deplorable  question — viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  a 
Baptist  elder — passed  unnoticed,  for  with  the  last  'words  the 
shop-bell  rang,  and  Purcell  went  off,  transformed  on  the  instant 
into  the  sharp,  attentive  tradesman. 

Lucy  sat  wiping  her  cups  mechanically  for  a  little  while. 
Then,  when  they  were  all  done,  and  Mary  Ann  had  been  loftily 
commanded  to  put  them  away,  she  slipped  upstairs  to  her  own 
room,  a  little  attic  at  the  top  of  the  house.  Here  she  went  to  a 
deal  press,  which  had  been  her  mother's,  opened  it,  and  took  out 
a  dress  which  hung  in  a  compartment  by  itself,  enveloped  in  a 
holland  wrapper,  lest  Manchester  smuts  should  harm  it.  She 
undid  the  wrapper,  and  laid  it  on  the  bed.  It  was  an  embroi- 
dered white  muslin,  adorned  with  lace  and  full  knots  of  narrow 
pink  ribbon. 

'  What  a  trouble  I  had  to  get  the  ribbon  just  that  width,'  she 
thought  to  herself  ruefully,  'and  everybody  said  it  was  so  un- 
common. I  might  as  well  give  it  Dora.  I  don't  believe  I  shall 
ever  wear  it.  I  don't  know  what'll  become  of  me.  I  don't  get 
any  chances.' 

And  shaking  her  head  mournfully  from  side  to  side,  she  sat 
on  beside  the  dress,  in  the  light  of  her  solitary  candle,  her  hands 
clasped  round  her  knee,  the  picture  of  girlish  despair,  so  far. 
as  anything  so  daintily  gowned,  and  shoed,  and  curled,  could 
achieve  it.  She  was  thinking  drearily  of  some  people  who  were 
coming  to  supper,  one  of  her  father's  brother  elders  at  the 
chapel,  Mr.  Baruch  Barton,  and  his  daughter.  Mr.  Barton  had 
a  specialty  for  the  prophet  Zephaniah,  and  had  been  several 
times  shocked  because  Lucy  could  not  help  him  out  with  his 
quotations  from  that  source.  His  daughter,  a  little  pinched 
asthmatic  creature,  in  a  dress  whereof  every  gore  and  seam  was 
an  affront  to  the  art  of  dressmaking,  wras  certainly  thirty,  pro- 
bably more.  And  between  thirty  and  the  Psalmist's  limit  of 
existence,  there  is  the  very  smallest  appreciable  difference,  in 
the  opinion  of  seventeen.  What  could  she  have  to  say  to  Emmy 
Barton  ?  Lucy  asked  herself.  She  began  yawning  from  sheer 
dulness,  as  she  thought  of  her.  If  it  were  only  time  to  go  to 
bed! 

Suddenly  she  heard  a  sound  of  raised  voices  in  the  upper  shop 
on  the  floor  below.  What  could  it  be  ?  She  started  up.  '  Mr. 
Grieve  and  father  quarrelling  ! '  She  knew  it  must  come  to  that  ! 

She  crept  down  the  stairs  with  every  precaution  possible  till 
she  came  to  the  door  behind  which  the  loud  talk  which  had 
startled  her  was  going  on.  Here  she  listened  with  all  her  ears, 
but  at  first  to  very  little  purpose.  David  was  speaking,  but  so 
rapidly,  and  apparently  so  near  to  the  other  end  of  the  room, 
that  she  could  bear  nothing.  Then  her  father  broke  in,  and  by 
dint  of  straining  very  hard,  she  caught  most  of  what  he  said  be- 
fore the  whole  colloquy  came  abruptly  to  an  end.  She  heard 


146  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

Purcell's  heavy  tread  descending  the  little  iron  spiral  staircase 
leading  from  the  lower  shop  to  the  upper.  She  heard  David 
moving  about,  as  though  he  were  gathering  up  books  and  papers, 
and  then,  with  a  loud  childish  sob  which  burst  from  her  un- 
awares, she  ran  upstairs  again  to  her  own  room. 

'  Oh,  he's  going,  he's  going ! '  she  cried  under  her  breath,  as 
she  stood  before  the  glass  winking  to  keep  the  tears  back,  and 
biting  her  handkerchief  hard  between  her  little  white  teeth. 
"  Oh,  what  shall  I  do  ?  what  shall  I  do  ?  It'll  be  always  the  same  ; 
just  when  anyone  might  like  me,  it  all  stops.  And  he  won't  care 
one  little,  little  bit.  He'll  never  think  of  me  again.  Oh,  I  do 
think  somebody  might  care  about  me — might  be  sorry  for  me  ! ' 

And  she  locked  her  hands  tight  before  her,  and  stared  at  the 
glass,  while  the  tears  forced  their  way.  But  all  the  time  she 
was  noticing  how  prettily  she  stood,  how  slim  she  was.  And 
though  she  smarted,  she  would  not  for  the  world  have  been  with- 
out her  smart,  her  excitement,  her  foolish  secret,  which,  for 
sheer  lack  of  something  to  do  and  think  about,  had  suddenly 
grown  to  such  magnitude  in  her  eyes.  It  was  hard  to  cherish  a 
hopeless  passion  for  a  handsome  youth,  without  a  halfpenny, 
who  despised  you,  but  it  was  infinitely  better  than  to  have  no- 
thing in  your  mind  but  Emmy  Barton  and  the  prophet  Zephaniah. 
Nay,  as  she  washed  her  hands  and  smoothed  her  dress  and  hair 
with  trembling  fingers,  she  became  quite  friendly  with  her  pain 
— in  a  sense,  even  proud  of  it,  and  jealous  for  it.  It  was  a  sign 
of  mature  life — of  something  more  than  mere  school-girlishness. 
Like  the  lover  in  the  Elizabethan  sonnet,  '  She  had  been  vexed,  if 
vexed  she  had  not  been  ! ' 


CHAPTER  III 

'COME  in,  David,'  said  Mr.  Ancrum,  opening  the  door  of  his  little 
sitting-room  in  Mortimer  Street.  '  You're  rather  late,  but  I 
don't  wonder.  Such  a  wind  !  I  could  hardly  stand  against  it 
myself.  But,  then,  I'm  an  atomy.  What,  no  top-coat  in  such 
weather  !  What  do  you  mean  by  that,  sir  ?  You're  wet  through. 
There,  dry  yourself.' 

David,  with  a  grin  at  Mr.  Ancrum's  unnecessary  concern 
for  him,  deposited  himself  in  the  carpet  chair  which  formed  the 
minister's  only  lounge,  and  held  out  his  legs  and  arms  to  the 
blaze.  He  was  wet  indeed,  and  bespattered  with  the  blackest  mud 
in  the  three  kingdoms.  But  the  battle  with  wind  and  rain  had 
so  brought  into  play  all  the  physical  force  of  him,  had  so  bright- 
ened eye  and  cheek,  and  tossed  the  black  hair  into  such  a  fine 
confusion,  that,  as  he  sat  there  bending  over  the  glow  of  the  fire, 
the  crippled  man  opposite,  sickly  with  long  confinement  and 
over-thinking,  could  not  take  his  eyes  from  him.  The  storm 
with  all  its  freshness,  youth  with  a'l  its  reckless  joy  in  itself, 


CITAP.  in  YOUTH  147 

seemed  to  have  come  in  with  the  lad  and  transformed  the  little 
dingy  room. 

'  What  do  you  wear  trash  like  that  for  in  a  temperature  like 
this  ? '  said  the  minister,  touching  his  guest's  thin  and  much-worn 
coat.  '  Don't  you  know,  David,  that  your  health  is  money  ? 
Suppose  you  get  lung  trouble,  who's  to  look  after  you  ? ' 

'  It  don't  do  me  no  harm,  sir.  I  can't  get  into  my  last  year's 
coat,  and  I  couldn't  afford  a  new  one  this  winter.' 

'  What  wages  do  you  earn  ? '  asked  Ancrum.  His  manner 
was  a  curious  mixture  of  melancholy  gentleness  and  of  that  terse 
sharpness  in  practical  things  which  the  south  country  resents 
and  the  north  country  takes  for  granted. 

'Eighteen  shillings  a  week,  since  last  "November,  sir.' 

'  That  ought  to  be  enough  for  a  top-coat,  you  rascal,  with  only 
yourself  to  feed,'  said  Mr.  Ancrum,  stretching  himself  in  his 
hard  armchair,  so  as  to  let  his  lame  leg  with  its  heavy  boot  rest 
comfortably  on  the  fender.  David  had  noticed  at  first  sight  of 
him  that  his  old  playfellow  had  grown  to  look  much  older  than 
in  the  Clough  End  days.  His  hair  was  nearly  white,  and  lay 
in  a  large  smooth  wave  across  the  broad  brow.  And  in  that 
brow  there  were  deep  furrows,  and  many  a  new  and  premature 
line  in  the  hollow  cheeks.  Something  withering  and  blighting 
seemed  to  have  passed  over  the  whole  man  since  those  Sunday 
school  lessons  in  the  Christian  Brethren's  upper  room,  which 
David  still  remembered  so  well/  But  the  eyes  with  their  irre- 
sistible intensity  and  force  were  the  same.  In  them  the  minister's 
youth — he  was  not  yet  thirty-five — still  spoke,  as  from  a  last 
stronghold  in  a  failing  realm.  They  had  a  strange  look  too,  the 
look  as  of  a  secret  life,  not  for  the  passer-by. 

David  smiled  at  Ancrum's  last  remark,  and  for  a  moment  or 
two  looked  into  the  fire  without  speaking. 

'  Well,  if  I'd  bought  clothes  or  anything  else  this  winter,  I 
should  be  in  a  precious  worse  hole  than  I  am,'  he  said  reflectively. 

'Hole?     What's  wrong,  Davy?' 

'  My  master  gave  me  the  sack  Monday.' 

'Humph!'  said  Ancrum,  surveying  "him.  'Well,  you  don't 
look  much  cast  down  about  it,  I  must  say.' 

'  Well,  you  see,  I'd  laid  my  plans,'  said  the  young  man,  an 
irrepressible  gaiety  and  audacity  in  every  feature.  '  It  isn't  as 
though  I  were  taken  by  surprise.' 

'  Plans  for  a  new  place,  I  suppose  ? ' 

'  No  ;  I  have  done  with  that.  I  am  going  to  set  up  for  my- 
self. I  know  the  trade,  and  I've  got  some  money.' 

'  How  old  are  you,  Davy  ? ' 

'Just  upon  twenty,'  said  the  lad,  quietly. 

The  minister  pursed  up  his  lips  and  whistled  a  little. 

'  Well,  that's  bold,'  he  said.  '  Somehow  I  like  it,  though  by 
all  the  laws  of  prudence  I  ought  to  jump  down  your  throat  for 
announcing  such  a  thing.  But  how  did  you  get  your  money  ? 
and  what  have  you  been  doing  these  four  years  ?  Come,  I'm  an 


148  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

old  friend, — though  I  dare  say  you  don't  think  me  much  of  a 
fellow.  Out  with  it !  Pay  me  anyway  for  all  those  ships  I  made 
you  long  ago.' 

And  he  held  out  his  blanched  hand,  little  more  now  than  skin 
and  bone.  David  put  his  own  into  it  awkwardly  enough.  At 
this  period  of  his  life  he  was  not  demonstrative. 

The  story  he  had  to  tell  was,  to  Ancrum's  thinking,  a  remark- 
able one.  He  had  come  into  Manchester  on  an  October  evening 
with  five  shillings  and  threepence  in  his  pocket.  From  a  point 
on  the  south-western  border  of  the  city  he  took  a  'bus  for  Deans- 
gate  and  Victoria  Street.  As  he  was  sitting  on  the  top,  feeding 
his  eyes  on  the  lights  and  the  crowd  of  the  streets,  but  wholly 
ignorant  where  to  go  and  what  first  step  to  take,  he  fell  into  talk 
with  a  decent  working-man  and  his  wife  sitting  beside  him. 
The  result  of  the  talk  was  that  they  offered  him  shelter  at  four- 
pence  a  night.  He  dismounted  with  them  at  Blackfriars  Bridge, 
and  they  made  their  way  across  the  river  to  a  street  in  Sali'ord, 
where  he  lodged  with  them  for  a  week.  During  that  week  he 
lived  on  oatmeal  and  an  occasional  baked  potato,  paying  his 
hostess  eighteenpence  additional  for  the  use  of  her  fire,  and  the 
right  to  sit  in  her  kitchen  when  he  was  not  tramping  about  in 
search  of  work.  By  the  end  of  the  week  he  had  found  a  post  as 
errand-boy  at  a  large  cheap  bookseller's  and  stationer's  in  Deans- 
gate,  at  eight  shillings  a  week,  his  good  looks,  manner,  and 
education  evidently  helping  him  largely,  as  Mr.  Ancrum  could 
perceive  through  the  boy's  very  matter-of-fact  account  of  himself. 
He  then  made  an  agreement  for  bed,  use  of  fire,  and  kitchen, 
with  his  new  friends  at  four  shillings  a  week,  and  by  the  end  of 
six  months  he  was  receiving  a  wage  of  fourteen  shillings  as 
salesman  and  had  saved  close  on  five  pounds. 

'  "Well,  now,  come,  how  did  you  manage  that,  Davy  ? '  said 
Mr.  Ancrum,  interrupting.  '  Don't  run  on  in  that  fashion. 
Details  are  the  only  interesting  things  in  life,  and  details  I'll 
have.  You  must  have  found  it  a  precious  tight  fit  to  save  that 
five  pounds.' 

Whereupon  David,  his  eye  kindling,  ran  out  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin and  the  '  Vegetarian  News,'  his  constant  friends  from  the 
first  day  of  his  acquaintance  with  the  famous  autobiography  till 
now,  in  spite  of  such  occasional  lapses  into  carnal  feeding  as  he 
had  confessed  to  Daddy.  In  a  few  minutes  Ancrum  found  him- 
self buried  in  '  details  '  as  to  '  flesh-forming  '  and  '  bone-forming' 
foods,  as  to  nitrogen  and  albumen,  as  to  the  saving  qualities  of 
fruit,  and  Heaven  knows  what  besides.  Long  before  the  enthu- 
siast had  spent  his  breath  or  his  details,  the  minister  cried 
'  Enough  ! ' 

'  Young  materialist,'  he  said  growling,  '  what  do  you  mean  at 
your  age  by  thinking  so  much  about  your  body  ? ' 

'It  wasn't  my  body,  sir,'  said  David,  simply,  'it  was  just 
business.  If  I  had  got  ill,  I  couldn't  have  worked  ;  if  I  had  lived 
like  other  chaps,  I  couldn't  have  saved.  So  I  had  to  know 


CHAP,  in  YOUTH  149 

something  about  it,  and  it  wasn't  bad  fun.  After  a  bit  I  got  the 
people  I  lodged  with  to  eat  a  lot  of  the  things  I  eat — aud  that 
was  cheaper  for  me  of  course.  The  odd  thing  about  vegetarian 
ism  is  that  you  come  not  to  care  a  rap  what  you  eat.  Your  taste 
goes  somehow.  So  long  as  you're  nourished  and  can  do  your 
work,  that's  all  you  want.' 

The  minister  sat  studying  his  visitor  a  minute  or  two  in 
silence,  though  the  eyes  under  the  care-worn  brow  were  bright 
and  restless.  Any  defiance  of  the  miserable  body  was  in  itself 
delightful  to  a  man  who  had  all  but  slain  himself  many  times 
over  in  the  soul's  service.  He,  too,  had  been  living  on  a  crust 
for  months,  denying  himself  first  this,  then  that  ingredient  of 
what  should  have  been  an  invalid's  diet.  But  it  had  been  for 
cause — for  the  poor — for  self-mortification.  There  was  some- 
thing just  a  little  jarring  to  the  ascetic  in  this  contact  with  a  self- 
denial  of  the  purely  rationalistic  type,  so  easy — so  cheerful — 
put  forward  without  the  smallest  suspicion  of  merit,  as  a  mere 
business  measure. 

David  resumed  his  story.  By  the  end  of  another  six  months 
it  appeared  that  he  had  grown  tired  of  his  original  shop,  with  its 
vast  masses  of  school  stationery  and  cheap  new  books.  As  might 
have  been  expected  from  his  childish  antecedents,  he  had  been 
soon  laid  hold  of  by  the  old  bookstalls,  had  read  at  them  on  his 
way  from  work,  had  spent  on  them  all  that  he  could  persuade 
himself  to  spare  from  his  hoard,  and  in  a  year  from  the  time  he 
entered  Manchester,  thanks  to  wits,  reading,  and  chance  friend- 
ships, was  already  a  budding  bibliophile.  Slates  and  primers 
became  suddenly  odious  to  a  person  aware  of  the  existence  of 
Aldines  and  Elzevirs,  and  bitten  with  the  passion,  then  just  let 
loose  on  the  book-buying  world,  for  first  editions  of  the  famous 
books  of  the  century.  Whenever  that  sum  in  the  savings  bank 
should  have  reached  a  certain  height,  he  would  become  a  second- 
hand bookseller  with  a  stall.  Till  then  he  must  save  more  and 
learn  his  trade.  So  at  the  end  of  his  first  year  he  left  his  em- 
ployers, and  by  the  help  of  excellent  recommendations  from  them 
got  the  post  of  assistant  in  Purcell's  shop  in  Half  Street,  at  a  rise 
of  two  shillings,  afterwards  converted  into  four  shillings  a  week. 

'  And  I've  been  there  three  years — very  near,'  said  David, 
straightening  himself  with  a  little  nervous  gesture  peculiar  to 
him.  '  If  you'd  been  anywhere  about,  sir,  you'd  have  wondered 
how  I  could  have  stayed  so  long.  But  I  wanted  to  learn  the 
trade  and  I've  learnt  it — no  thanks  to  old  Purcell.' 

'  What  was  wrong  with  him  ? ' 

'  Mostly  brains  ! '  said  the  lad,  with  a  scornful  but  not  unat- 
tractive conceit.  '  He  was  a  hard  master  to  live  with — that  don't 
matter.  But  he  is  a  fool  !  I  don't  mean  to  say  he  don't  know  a 
lot  about  some  things — but  he  thinks  he  knows  everything — and 
he  don't.  And  he'll  not  let  anyone  tell  him — not  he  !  Once,  if 
you'll  believe  it,  he  got  the  Aldine  Virgil  of  1501,  for  twenty-five 
shillings — came  from  a  gentleman  out  Eccles  way — a  fellow  sell- 


150  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

ing  his  father's  library  and  didn't  know  bad  from  good, — real 
fine  tall  copy, — binding  poor, — but  a,  stunner  take  it  altogether — 
worth  twenty  pounds  to  Quaritch  or  Ellis,  any  day.  Well,  all 
I  could  do,  he  let  a  man  have  it  for  five  shillings  profit  next  day, 
just  to  spite  me,  I  believe,  because  I  told  him  it  was  a  good 
thing.  Then  he  got  sick  about  that,  I  believe,  though  he  never 
let  out,  and  the  next  time  he  found  anything  that  looked  good, — 
giminy  ! — but  he  put  it  on.  Now  you  know,  sir  ' — Mr.  Ancrum 
smiled  at  the  confidential  eagerness  of  the  expert — '  you  know,  sir, 
it's  not  many  of  those  Venice  or  Florence  Dantes  that  are  worth 
anything.  If  you  get  the  first  edition  of  Landino's  '  Commen- 
tary,' or  the  other  man's,  Imola's,  isn't  it — ' 

The  minister  lifted  his  eyebrows — the  Italian  came  out  pat, 
and,  so  far  as  he  knew,  right — 

'  Well,  of  course,  they're  worth  money—  always  fetch  their 
price.  But  the  later  editions  are  no  good  at  all — nobody  but  a 
gentleman-collector,  very  green,  you  know,  sir' — the  twinkle  in 
the  boy's  eye  showed  how  much  his  subject  was  setting  him  at 
his  ease — '  would  be  bothered  with  them.  Well,  if  he  didn't  get 
hold  of  an  edition  of  1540  or  so — worth  about  eight  shillings, 
and  dear  at  that — and  send  it  up  to  one  of  the  London  men  as  a 
good  thing.  He  makes  me  pack  it  and  send  it  and  register  it — 
you  might  have  thought  it  was  the  Mazarin  Bible,  bar  size. 
And  then,  of  course,  next  day,  down  comes  the  book  again 
flying,  double  quick.  I  kept  out  of  his  way,  post-time  !  But  I'd 
have  given  something  to  see  the  letter  he  got.' 

And  David,  rising,  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and  stood 
before  the  fire  chuckling  with  irrepressible  amusement. 

'  Well,  then  you  know  there's  the  first  editions  of  Rousseau — 
not  a  bit  rare,  as  rare  goes — lucky  if  you  get  thirty  shillings  for 
the  "  Contrat  Social,"  or  the  "Nouvelle  Heloise,"  even  good 
copies — ' 

Again  the  host's  eyebrows  lifted.  The  French  names  ran 
remarkably ;  there  was  not  the  least  boggling  over  them.  But 
he  said  nothing,  and  David  rattled  on,  describing,  with  a  gusto 
which  never  failed,  one  of  Purcell's  book-selling  enormities  after 
another.  It  was  evident  that  he  despised  his  master  with  a 
passionate  contempt.  It  was  evident  also  that  Piircell  had 
shown  a  mean  and  unreasoning  jealousy  of  his  assistant.  The 
English  tradesman  inherits  a  domineering  tradition  towards  his 
subordinates,  and  in  Purcell's  case,  as  we  know,  the  instincts  of 
an  egotistical  piety  had  reinforced  those  of  the  employer.  Yet 
Mr.  Ancrum  felt  some  sympathy  with  Purcell. 

'  Well,  Davy,'  he  said  at,  last,  'so  you  were  too  'cute  for  your 
man,  that's  plain.  But  I  don't  suppose  he  put  it  on  that 
ground  when  he  gave  you  the  sack  ? ' 

And  he  looked  up,  with  a  little  dry  smile. 

'  No  ! '  cried  David,  abruptly.  '  No  !  not  he.  If  you  go  and 
ask  him  he'll  tell  you  he  sent  me  off  because  I  would  go  to  the 
Secularist  meetings  at  the  Hall  of  Science,  and  air  myself  as  an 


CHAP,  in  •       YOUTH  151 

atheist ;  that's  his  way  of  putting  it.  And  it  was  doing  him 
harm  with  his  religious  customers  1  As  if  I  was  going  to  let 
him  dictate  where  I  went  on  Sundays  ! ' 

'Of  course  not,'  said  Ancrum,  with  a  twist  of  his  oddly 
shaped  mouth.  'Even  the  very  youngest  of  us  might  some- 
times be  the  better  for  advice ;  but,  hang  it,  let's  be  free — free 
to  "make  fools  of  ourselves,"  as  a  wise  man  hath  it.  Well, 
Davy,  no  offence,'  for  his  guest  had  flushed  suddenly.  '  So  you 
go  to  the  Hall  of  Science  ?  Did  you  hear  Holyoake  and  Brad- 
laugh  there  the  other  night  ?  You  like  that  kind  of  thing?' 

'  I  like  to  hear  it,'  said  the  lad,  stoutly,  meeting  his  old 
teacher's  look,  half  nervously,  half  defiantly.  '  It's  a  great  deal 
more  lively  than  what  you  hear  at  most  churches,  sir.  And 
why  shouldn't  one  hear  everything  ? ' 

This  was  not  precisely  the  tone  which  the  same  culprit  had 
adopted  towards  Dora  Lomax.  The  Voltairean  suddenly  felt 
himself  to  be  making  excuses — shabby  excuses — in  the  presence 
of  somebody  connected,  however  distantly,  with  Vinfdme.  He 
drew  himself  up  with  an  angry  shake  of  his  whole  powerful 
frame. 

1  Oh,  why  not  ? '  said  Ancrum,  with  a  shrug,  '  if  life's  long 
enough  '—and  he  absently  lifted  and  let  fall  a  book  which  lay  ou 
the  table  beside  him  ;  it  was  Newman's  'Dream  of  Gerontius' — 
'  if  life's  long  enough,  and — happy  enough !  Well,  so  you've 
been  learning  French,  I  can  hear,  teaching  yourself  ? ' 

'  No ;  there's  an  old  Frenchman,  old  Barbier — do  you  know 
him,  sir?  He  gives  lessons  at  a  shilling  an  hour.  Very  few 
people  go  to  him  now ;  they  want  younger  men.  And  there's 
lot's  of  them  about.  But  old  Barbier  knows  more  about  books 
than  any  of  them,  I'll  be  bound.' 

'  Has  he  introduced  you  to  French  novels  ?  I  never  read  any  ; 
but  they're  bad,  of  course — must  be.  In  all  those  things  I'm  a 
Britisher  and  believe  what  the  Britishers  say.' 

'We're  just  at  the  end  of  "  Manon  Lescaut,'1'  said  David, 
doggedly.  '  And  partly  with  him,  partly  by  myself,  I've  read  a 
bit  of  Rousseau — and  a  good  lot  of  Diderot, — and  Voltaire.' 

David  threw  an  emphasis  into  the  last  name,  which  was 
meant  to  atone  to  himself  for  the  cowardice  of  a  few  minutes 
before.  The  old  boyish  feeling  towards  Mr.  Ancrum,  which  had 
revived  in  him  when  he  entered  the  room,  had  gradually  disap- 
peared again.  He  bore  the  minister  no  real  grudge  for  having 
forgotten  him,  but  he  wished  it  to  be  clearly  understood  that  the 
last  fragments  of  the  Christian  Brethren  yoke  had  dropped  from 
his  neck. 

'Ah!  don't  know  anything  about  them,'  said  Ancrum, 
slowly;  'but  then,  as  you  know,  I'm  a  very  ignorant  person. 
Well,  now,  was  it  Voltaire  took  you  to  the  secularists,  or  the 
secularists  to  Voltaire  ? ' 

David  laughed,  but  did  not  give  a  reply  immediately. 

'Well,  never  mind,'  said  the  minister.      'All  Christians  are 


152  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVH)  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

fools,  of  course — that's  understood. — Is  that  all  you  have  been 
learning  these  four  years  ?' 

'  I  work  at  Latin  every  morning,'  said  David,  very  red.  and 
on  his  dignity.  '  I've  begun  Greek,  and  I  go  to  the  science 
classes,  mathematics  and  chemistry,  at  the  Mechanics'  Institute.' 

Mr.  Ancrum's  face  softened. 

'  Why,  I'll  be  bound  you  have  to  go  to  work  pretty  early,  Davy  ? ' 

'  Seven  o'clock,  sir,  I  take  the  shutters  down.  But  I  get  an 
hour  and  a  half  first,  and  three  hours  in  the  evening.  This  win- 
ter I've  got  through  the  "^Eneid,"  and  Horace's  "  Epistles"  and 
"  Ars  Poetica."  Do  you  remember,  sir?' — and  the  lad's  voice 
grew  sharp  once  more,  tightening  as  it  were  under  the  pressure 
of  eagerness  and  ambition  from  beneath — '  do  you  remember  that 
Scaliger  read  the  "Iliad"  in  twenty  days,  and  was  a  finished 
Greek  scholar  in  two  years  ?  Why  can't  one  do  that  now  ? ' 

4  Why  shouldn't  you  ? '  said  Mr.  Ancrum,  looking  up  at  him. 
'  Who  helps  you  in  your  Greek  ? ' 

'  No  one  ;  I  get  translations.' 

'  Well,  now,  look  here,  Davy.  I'm  an  ignorant  person,  as  I 
told  you,  but  I  learnt  some  Latin  and  Greek  at  Manchester  New 
College.  Come  to  me  in  the  evenings,  and  I'll  help  you  with  your 
Greek,  unless  you've  got  beyond  me.  Where  are  you  ? ' 

The  budding  Scaliger  reported  himself.  He  had  read  the 
'  Anabasis,'  some  Herodotus,  three  plays  of  Euripides,  and  was 
now  making  some  desperate  efforts  on  *J£schylus  and  Sophocles. 
Any  Plato  ?  David  made  a  face.  He  had  read  two  or  three  dia- 
logues in  English  ;  didn't  want  to  go  on,  didn't  care  about  him. 
Ah  !  Ancrum  supposed  not. 

'Twelve  hours'  shop,'  said  the  minister  reflecting,  'more  or 
less, — two  hours'  work  before  shop, — three  hours  or  so  after  shop  ; 
that's  what  you  may  call  driving  it  hard.  You  couldn't  do  it, 
Richard  Ancrum,'  and  he  shook  his  head  with  a  whimsical  melan- 
choly. 'But  you  were  always  a  poor  starveling.  Youth  that 
is  youth  's  tough.  Don't  tell  me,  sir,'  and  he  looked  up  sharply, 
'  that  you  don't  amuse  yourself.  I  wouldn't  believe  it.  There 
never  was  a  man  built  like  you  yet  that  didn't  amuse  himself.' 

David  smiled,  but  said  nothing. 

'  Billiards  ? ' 

'No,  sir.' 

'Betting?' 

'  No,  sir.     They  cost  money.' 

'Niggardly  dog  !    Drink  ? — no,  I'll  answer  that  for  myself.' 

The  minister  dropped  his  catechism,  and  sat  nursing  his  lame 
leg  and  thinking.  Suddenly  he  broke  out  with,  'How  many 
young  women  are  you  in  love  with,  David  ? ' 

David  showed  his  white  teeth. 

'  I  only  know  two,  sir.  One's  my  master's  daughter — she's 
rather  a  pretty  girl,  I  think — 

'  That'll  do.     You're  not  in  love  with  her.     "Who's  the  other  ?' 

'  The  other's  Mr.  Lomax's  daughter, — Lomax  of  the  Parlour, 


CHAP,  in  YOUTH  153 

that  queer  restaurant,  sir,  in  Market  Place.  She — well,  I  don't 
know  how  to  describe  her.  She's  not  good-looking— at  least,  I 
don't  think  so,'  he  added  dubiously.  '  She's  very  High  Church, 
and  fasts  all  Lent.  I  think  she  does  Church  embroidery.' 

'And  doesn't  think  any  the  better  of  you  for  attending  the 
Hall  of  Science  ?  Sensible  girl !  Still,  when  people  mean  to  fall 
in  love,  they  don't  think  twice  of  that  sort  of  thing.  I  make  a 
note  of  Lomax's  daughter.  Ah  !  enter  supper.  David,  if  you  let 
any  'ism  stand  between  you  and  that  veal  pie,  I  despair  of  your 
future.' 

David,  however,  in  the  course  of  the  meal,  showed  himself  a? 
superior  to  narrowness  of  view  in  the  matter  of  food-stuffs  as  in 
other  matters.  The  meal  went  merrily.  Mr.  Ancrum  dropped 
his  half-sarcastic  tone,  and  food,  warmth,  and  talk  loosened  the 
lad's  fibres,  and  made  him  more  and  more  human,  handsome, 
and  attractive.  Soon  his  old  friend  knew  all  that  he  wanted  to 
know, — the  sum  David  had  saved — thirty  pounds  in  the  savings- 
bank — the  sort  of  stock  he  meant  to  set  up,  the  shop  he  had  taken 
— with  a  stall,  of  course — no  beginner  need  hope  to  prosper  with- 
out a  stall.  Customers  must  be  delicately  angled  for  at  a  safe 
distance — show  yourself  too  much,  and,  like  trout,  they  flashed 
away.  See  everything,  force  nothing.  Let  n  book  be  turned 
over  for  nineteen  days,  the  chances  were  that  on  the  twentieth 
you  would  turn  over  the  price.  As  to  expecting  the  class  of 
cheap  customers  to  commit  themselves  by  walking  into  a  shop, 
it  was  simple  madness.  Of  course,  when  you  were  '  established,' 
that  was  another  matter. 

By  the  help  of  a  certain  wealthy  Unitarian,  one  Mr.  Doyle, 
with  whom  he  had  made  friends  in  Purcell's  shop,  and  whom  he 
had  boldly  asked  for  the  use  of  his  name  as  a  reference,  the  lad 
had  taken — so  it  appeared — a  small  house  in  Potter  Street,  a  nar- 
row but  frequented  street  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Deansgate  and 
all  the  great  banks  and  insurance  offices  in  King  Street.  His 
shop  took  up  the  ground  floor.  The  two  floors  above  were  let, 
and  the  tenants  would  remain.  But  into  the  attics  and  the 
parlour  kitchen  behind  the  shop,  he  meant,  ultimately,  when  he 
could  afford  it,  to  put  himself  and  his  sister.  He  could  only  get 
the  house  on  a  yearly  tenancy,  as  it  and  the  others  near  it  weie 
old,  and  would  probably  be  rebuilt  before  long.  But  meanwhile 
the  rent  was  all  the  lower  because  of  the  insecurity  of  tenure. 

At  the  mention  of  the  boy's  sister,  Ancrum  looked  up  with  a 
start. 

'  Ah,  to  be  sure  !  What  became  of  that  poor  child  after  you 
left  ?  The  Clough  End  friends  who  wrote  to  me  of  your  disap- 
pearance had  more  pity  for  her,  Davy,  than  they  had  for  you.' 

A  sudden  repulsion  and  reserve  darkened  the  black  eyes 
opposite. 

'  There  was  no  helping  it,'  he  said  with  hasty  defiance.  There 
was  a  moment's  silence.  Then  a  wish  to  explain  himself  rose  in 
David. 


154  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

'  I  couldn't  have  stayed,  sir,'  he  said,  with  a  curious  half- 
reproachful  accent.  '  I  told  you  about  how  it  was  before  you 
left.  And  there  were  other  things.  I  should  have  cut  my  own 
throat  or  some  one  else's  if  it  had  gone  on.  But  I  haven't 
forgotten  Louie.  You  remember  Tom  Mullins  at  the  foundry. 
He's  written  me  every  month.  I  paid  him  for  it.  I  know  all 
about  Louie,  and  they  don't  know  anything  about  me.  They 
think  I'm  in  America.' 

His  eyes  lit  again  with  the  joy  of  contrivance. 

'Is  that  kind,  Davy?' 

'  Yes,  sir — '  and  for  the  first  time  the  minister  heard  in  the 
boy's  voice  the  tone  of  a  man's  judgment.  '  I  couldn't  have 
Louie  on  me  just  yet.  I  was  going  to  ask  you,  sir,  not  to  tell 
the  people  at  Clough  End  you've  seen  me.  It  would  make  it 
very  hard.  You  know  what  Louie  is — and  she's  all  right.  She's 
learnt  a  trade.' 

'What  trade?' 

'  Silk-weaving — from  Margaret  Dawson.' 

1  Poor  soul — poor  saint !  There'd  be  more  things  than  her 
trade  to  be  learnt  from  Margaret  Dawson  if  anyone  had  a  mind 
to  learn  them.  What  of  'Lias  ? ' 

'  Oh,  he  died,  sir,  a  week  after  I  left.'  The  lad's  voice  dropped. 
Then  he  added  slowly,  looking  away,  '  Tom  said  he  was  very 
quiet — he  didn't  suffer  much — not  at  the  end.' 

'Aye,  the  clouds  lift  at  sunset,'  said  Mr.  Ancrum  in  an 
altered  tone  ;  '  the  air  clears  before  the  night ! ' 

His  head  fell  forward  on  his  breast,  and  he  sat  drumming  on 
the  table.  They  had  finished  supper,  the  little,  bustling  land- 
lady had  cleared  away,  and  Davy  was  thinking  of  going.  Sud- 
denly the  minister  sprang  up  and  stood  before  the  fire,  looking 
down  at  his  guest. 

'  Davy,  do  you  want  to  know  why  I  didn't  write  to  you  ?  I 
was  ill  first — very  ill ;  then — /  was  in  hell  ! ' 

David  started.  Into  the  thin,  crooked  face,  with  the  seeking 
eyes,  there  had  flashed  an  expression — sinister,  indescribable,  a 
sort  of  dumb  rage.  It  changed  the  man  altogether. 

'  I  was  in  hell  ! '  he  repeated  slowly.  '  I  know  no  more  about 
it.  Other  people  may  tell  you,  perhaps,  if  you  come  across 
them — I  can't.  There  were  days  at  Clough  End — always  a  cer- 
tain number  in  the  year — when  this  earth  slipped  away  from  me, 
and  the  fiends  came  about  me,  but  this  was  months.  They  say 
I  was  overdone  in  the  cotton  famine  years  ago  just  before  I  came 
to  Clough  End.  I  got  pneumonia  after  I  left  you  that  May — 
it  doesn't  matter.  When  I  knew  there  was  a  sun  again,  I  wrote 
to  ask  about  you.  You  had  left  Kinder  and  gone — no  one  knew 
where.' 

David  sat  nervously  silent,  not  knowing  what  to  say,  his  mind 
gradually  filling  with  the  sense  of  something  tragic,  irreparable. 
Mr.  Ancrum,  too,  stood  straight  before  him,  as  though  turned  to 
stone. 


CHAP,  in  YOUTH  155 

At  last  David  got  up  and  approached  him.  Had  Ancrum  been 
looking  he  must  have  been  touched  by  the  change  in  the  lad's 
expression.  The  hard  self-reliant  force  of  the  face  had  melted 
into  feeling. 

'  Are  you  better  now,  sir  ?  I  knew  you  must  have  been  ill,' 
he  stammered. 

Ancrurn  started  as  though  just  wakened. 

'  111  ?  Yes,  I  was  pretty  bad,'  he  said  briskly,  and  in  his  most 
ordinary  tone,  though  with  a  long  breath.  '  But  I'm  as  fit  as 
anything  now.  Good  night,  Davy,  good  night.  Come  a  walk 
with  me  some  day  ?  Sunday  afternoon  ?  Done.  Here,  write 
me  your  new  address.' 

The  tall  form  and  curly  black  head  disappeared,  the  little 
lodging-house  room,  with  its  round  rosewood  table,  its  horsehair 
sofa,  its  chiffonnier,  and  its  prints  of  '  Sport  at  Balmoral '  and 
'  The  Mother's  Kiss,'  had  resumed  the  dingy  formality  of  every 
day. 

The  minister  sank  into  his  seat  and  held  his  hands  out  over 
the  blaze.  He  was  in  pain.  All  life  was  to  him  more  or  less  a 
struggle  with  physical  ill.  But  it  was  not  so  primarily  that  he 
conceived  it.  The  physical  ill  was  nothing  except  as  representing 
a  philosophical  necessity. 

That  lad,  with  all  his  raw  certainties — of  himself,  his  know- 
ledge, his  Voltaire — the  poor  minister  felt  once  or  twice  a  piteous 
envy  of  him,  as  he  sat  on  through  the  night  hours.  Life  was  ill- 
apportioned.  The  poor,  the  lonely,  the  feeble — it  is  they  who 
want  certainty,  want  hope  most.  And  because  they  are  lonely 
and  feeble,  because  their  brain  tissues  are  diseased,  and  their 
life  from  no  fault  of  their  own  unnatural,  nature  who  has  made 
them  dooms  them  to  despair  and  doubt.  Is  there  any  '  soul,' 
any  '  personality '  for  the  man  who  is  afflicted  and  weakened 
with  intermittent  melancholia  ?  Where  is  his  identity,  where 
his  responsibility  ?  And  if  there  is  none  for  him,  how  does  the 
accident  of  health  bestow  them  on  his  neighbour  ? 

Questions  of  this  sort  had  beset  Richard  Ancrum  for  years. 
On  the  little  book-table  to  his  right  lay  papers  of  Huxley's,  of 
Clifford's,  and  several  worn  volumes  of  mental  pathology.  The 
brooding  intellect  was  for  ever  raising  the  same  problem,  the 
same  spectre  world  of  universal  doubt,  in  which  God,  conscience, 
faith,  were  words  without  a  meaning. 

But  side  by  side  with  the  restlessness  of  the  intellect  there  had 
always  gone  the  imperious  and  prevailing  claim  of  temperament. 
Beside  Huxley  and  Clifford,  lay  Newman's  '  Sermons '  and 
'  Apologia, '  and  a  little  High  Church  manual  of  self-examination. 
And  on  the  wall  above  the  book-table  hung  a  memorandum-slate 
on  which  were  a  number  of  addresses  and  dates — the  addresses 
of  some  forty  boys  whom  the  minister  taught  on  Sunday  in  one 
of  the  Unitarian  Sunday  schools  of  Manchester,  and  visited  in 
the  week.  The  care  and  training  of  street  arabs  had  been  his 


156  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

passion  when  he  was  still  a  student  at  Manchester  New  College. 
Then  had  come  his  moment  of  utterance — a  thirst  for  preaching, 
for  religious  influence  ;  though  he  could  not  bring  himself  to 
accept  any  particular  shibboleth  or  take  any  kind  of  orders.  He 
found  something  congenial  for  a  time  to  a  deep  though  strug- 
gling faith  in  the  leadership  of  the  Christian  Brethren.  Now, 
however,  something  had  broken  in  him ;  lie  could  preach  no 
more.  But  he  could  go  back  to  his  old  school ;  he  could  teach 
his  boys  on  Sundays  and  week  days  ;  he  could  take  them  out 
country  walks  in  spite  of  his  lame  limb  ;  he  could  deny  himself 
even  the  commonest  necessaries  of  life  for  their  sake  ;  he  could 
watch  over  each  of  them  with  a  fervour,  a  moral  intensity  which 
wore  him  out.  In  this,  in  some  insignificant  journalism  for  a 
religious  paper,  and  in  thinking,  he  spent  his  life. 

There  had  been  a  dark  page  in  his  history.  He  had  hardly 
left  Manchester  New  College  when  he  married  suddenly  a  girl  of 
some  beauty,  but  with  an  undeveloped  sensuous  temperament. 
They  were  to  live  on  a  crust  and  give  themselves  to  the  service 
of  man.  His  own  dream  was  still  fresh  when  she  deserted  him 
in  the  company  of  one  of  his  oldest  friends.  He  followed  them, 
found  them  both  in  black  depths  of  remorse,  and  took  her  back. 
But  the  strain  of  living  together  proved  too  much.  She  implored 
him  to  let  her  go  and  earn  her  living  apart.  She  had  been  a 
teacher,  and  she  proposed  to  return  to  her  profession.  He  saw 
her  established  in  Glasgow  in  the  house  of  some  good  people  who 
knew  her  history,  and  who  got  her  a  post  in  a  small  school. 
Then  he  returned  to  Manchester  and  threw  himself  with  reckless 
ardour  into  the  work  of  feeding  the  hungry,  and  nursing  the 
dying,  in  the  cotton  famine.  He  emerged  a  broken  man,  physi- 
cally and  morally,  liable  thenceforward  to  recurrent  crises  of 
melancholia  ;  but  they  were  not  frequent  or  severe  enough  to 
prevent  his  working.  He  was  at  the  time  entirely  preoccupied 
with  certain  religious  questions,  and  thankfully  accepted  the  call 
to  the  little  congregation  at  Clough  End. 

Since  then  he  had  visited  his  wife  twice  every  year.  He  was 
extremely  poor.  His  family,  who  had  destined  him  for  the  Pres- 
byterian ministry,  were  estranged  from  him  ;  hardly  anyone  in 
Manchester  knew  him  intimately  ;  only  in  one  house,  far  away 
in  the  Scotch  lowlands,  were  there  two  people,  who  deeply  loved 
and  thoroughly  understood  him.  There  he  went  when  his  dark 
hours  came  upon  him  ;  and  thence,  after  the  terrible  illness 
which  overtook  him  on  his  leaving  Clough  End,  he  emerged 
again,  shattered  but  indomitable,  to  take  up  the  battle  of  life  as 
he  understood  it. 

He  was  not  an  able  nor  a  literary  man.  His  mind  was  a 
strange  medley,  and  his  mental  sight  far  from  clear.  Of  late 
the  study  of  Newman  had  been  a  revelation  to  him.  But  he  did 
not  cease  for  that  to  read  the  books  of  scientific  psychology 
which  tortured  him — the  books  which  seemed  to  make  of  mind  a 
function  of  matter,  and  man  the  slave  of  an  immoral  nature. 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  157 

The  only  persistent  and  original  gift  in  him — yet  after  all  it  is 
the  gift  which  for  ever  divides  the  sheep  from  the  goats — was 
that  of  a  '  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness.' 


CHAPTER  IV 

IT  was  towards  noon  on  a  November  day,  and  Dora  Lomax  sat 
working  at  her  embroidery  frame  in  the  little  sitting-room  over- 
looking Market  Place.  The  pale  wintry  sun  touched  her  bent 
head,  her  deftly  moving  hand,  and  that  device  of  the  risen  Christ 
circled  in  golden  flame  on  which  she  was  at  work.  The  room  in 
which  she  sat  was  old  and  low  ;  the  ceiling  bulged  here  and  there, 
the  floor  had  unexpected  slopes  and  declivities.  The  furniture 
was  of  the  cheapest,  the  commonest  odds  and  ends  of  a  broker's 
shop,  for  the  most  part.  There  was  the  usual  horsehair  suite,  the 
usual  cheap  sideboard,  and  dingy  druggeting  of  a  large  geomet- 
rical pattern.  But  amid  these  uninviting  articles  there  were  a 
few  things  which  gave  the  room  individuality — some  old  prints 
of  places  abroad,  of  different  shapes  and  sizes,  which  partly  dis- 
guised the  blue  and  chocolate  paper  on  the  walls ;  some  bits  of 
foreign  carving,  Swiss  and  Italian  ;  some  eggs  and  shells  and 
stuffed  birds,  some  of  these  last  from  the  Vosges,  some  from  the 
Alps ;  a  cagef  ul  of  canaries,  singing  their  best  against  the  noise 
of  Manchester ;  and,  lastly,  an  old  bookcase  full  of  miscellaneous 
volumes,  mostly  large  and  worthless  '  sets '  of  old  magazines  and 
encyclopedias,  which  represented  the  relics  of  Daddy's  bookselling 
days. 

The  room  smelt  strongly  of  cooking,  a  mingled  odour  of 
boiling  greens  and  frying  onions  and  stored  apples  which  never 
deserted  it,  and  produced  a  constant  slight  sense  of  nausea  in 
Dora,  who,  like  most  persons  of  sedentary  occupation,  was  in 
matters  of  eating  and  digestion  somewhat  sensitive  and  delicate. 
From  below,  too,  there  seemed  to  spread  upwards  a  general  sense 
of  bustle  and  disquiet.  Doors  banged,  knives  and  plates  rattled 
perpetually,  the  great  swing-door  into  the  street  was  for  ever 
opening  and  shutting,  each  time  shaking  the  old,  frail  house  with 
its  roughly  built  additions  through  and  through,  and  there  was 
a  distant  skurry  of  voices  that  never  paused.  The  restaurant 
indeed  was  in  full  work,  and  Daddy's  voice  could  be  heard  at 
intervals,  shouting  and  chattering.  Dora  had  been  at  work  since 
half-past  seven,  marketing,  giving  orders,  making  up  accounts, 
writing  bills  of  fare,  and  otherwise  organising  the  work  of  the 
day.  Now  she  had  left  the  work  for  an  hour  or  two  to  her  father 
and  the  stout  Lancashire  cook  with  her  various  handmaidens. 
Daddy's  irritable  pride  liked  to  get  her  out  of  the  way  and  make 
a  lady  of  her  as  much  as  she  would  allow,  and  in  her  secret  heart 
she  often  felt  that  her  embroidery,  for  which  she  was  well  paid  as 
a  skilled  and  inventive  hand,  furnished  a  securer  basis  for  their 
lives  than  this  restaurant,  which,  in  spite  of  its  apparent  success, 


158  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

was  a  frequent  source  of  dread  and  discomfort  to  her.  The 
money  obligation  it  involved  filled  her  sometimes  with  a  kind  of 
panic.  She  knew  her  father  so  well  I 

Now,  as  she  sat  absorbed  in  her  work,  sewing  her  heart  into 
it,  for  every  stitch  in  it  delighted  not  only  her  skilled  artistic 
sense  but  her  religious  feeling,  little  waves  of  anxious  thought 
swept  across  her  one  after  another.  She  was  a  person  of  timid 
and  brooding  temperament,  and  her  father's  eccentricities  and 
past  history  provided  her  with  much  just  cause  for  worry.  But 
to-day  she  was  not  thinking  much  of  him. 

Again  and  again  there  came  between  her  and  her  silks  a  face, 
a  face  of  careless  pride  and  power,  framed  in  strong  waves  of 
black  hair.  It  had  once  repelled  her  quite  as  much  as  it  attracted 
her.  But  at  any  rate,  ever  since  she  had  first  seen  it,  it  had 
taken  a  place  apart  in  her  mind,  as  though  in  the  yielding  stuff 
of  memory  and  feeling  one  impression  out  of  the  thousands  of 
every  day  had,  without  warning,  yet  irrevocably,  stamped  itself 
deeper  than  the  rest.  The  owner  of  it — David  Grieve — filled  her 
now,  as  always,  with  invincible  antagonisms  and  dissents.  But 
still  the  thought  of  him  had  in  some  gradual  way  become  of  late 
part  of  her  habitual  consciousness,  associated  always,  and  on  the 
whole  painfully  associated,  with  the  thought  of  Lucy  Purcell. 

For  Lucy  was  such  a  little  goose  !  To  think  of  the  way  in 
which  she  had  behaved  towards  young  Grieve  in  the  fortnight 
succeeding  his  notice  to  quit,  before  he  finally  left  Purcell's  ser- 
vice, made  Dora  hot  all  over.  How  could  Lucy  demean  herself 
so  ?  and  show  such  tempers  and  airs  towards  a  man  who  clearly 
did  not  think  anything  at  all  about  her  ?  And  now  she  had  flung 
herself  upon  Dora,  imploring  her  cousin  to  help  her,  and  threaten- 
ing desperate  things  unless  she  and  David  were  still  enabled  to 
meet.  And  meanwhile  Purcell  had  flatly  forbidden  any  commu- 
nication between  his  household  and  the  young  reprobate  he  had 
turned  out,  whose  threatened  prosperity  made  at  this  moment  the 
angry  preoccupation  of  his  life. 

What  was  Dora  to  do  ?  Was  she  to  aid  and  abet  Lucy,  against 
her  father's  will,  in  pursuing  David  Grieve  ?  And  if  in  spite  of 
all  appearances  the  little  self-willed  creature  succeeded,  and  Dora 
were  the  means  of  her  marrying  David,  how  would  Dora's  con- 
science stand  ?  Here  was  a  young  man  who  believed  in  nothing, 
and  openly  said  so,  who  took  part  in  those  terrible  atheistical 
meetings  and  discussions,  which,  as  Father  Russell  had  solemnly 
said,  were  like  a  plague-centre  in  Manchester,  drawing  in  and 
corrupting  soul  after  soul.  And  Dora  was  to  help  in  throwing 
her  young  cousin,  while  she  was  still  almost  a  child  with  no 
'  Church  principles '  to  aid  and  protect  her,  into  the  hands  of  this 
enemy  of  the  Lord  and  His  Church  ? 

Then,  when  it  came  to  this  point,  Dora  would  be  troubled  and 
drawn  away  by  memories  of  young  Grieve's  talk  and  ways,  of  his 
dashes  into  Market  Place  to  see  Daddy  since  he  had  set  up  for 
himself,  of  his  bold  plans  for  the  future  which  delighted  Daddy 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  159 

and  took  her  breath  away ;  of  the  flash  of  his  black  eyes ;  the 
triumphant  energy  of  his  youth ;  and  those  indications  in  him, 
too,  which  had  so  startled  her  of  late  since  they — she  and  he- 
had  dropped  the  futile  sparrings  in  which  their  acquaintance  be- 
gan, of  an  inner  softness,  a  sensitive  magnetic  something — inde- 
scribable. 

Dora's  needle  paused  in  mid-air.  Then  her  hand  dropped  on 
her  lap.  A  slight  but  charming  smile — born  of  youth,  sympathy, 
involuntary  admiration — dawned  on  her  face.  Sha  sat  so  for  a 
minute  or  two  lost  in  reminiscence. 

The  clock  outside  struck  twelve.  Dora  with  a  start  felt  along 
the  edge  of  her  frame  under  her  work  and  brought  out  a  book. 
It  was  a  little  black,  worn  manual  of  prayers  for  various  times 
and  occasions  compiled  by  a  High  Church  dignitary.  For  Dora 
it  had  a  talismanic  virtue.  She  turned  now  to  one  of  the  '  Prayers 
for  Noonday,'  made  the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  slipped  on  to  her 
knees  for  an  instant.  Then  she  rose  happily  and  went  back  to 
her  work.  It  was  such  acts  as  this  that  made  the  thread  on  which 
her  life  of  mystical  emotion  was  strung. 

But  her  father  was  a  Secularist  of  a  pronounced  type,  and  her 
mother  had  been  a  rigid  Baptist,  old-fashioned  and  sincere,  filled 
with  a  genuine  horror  of  Papistry  and  all  its  ways. 

Adrian  O'Connor  Lomax,  to  give  Daddy  his  whole  magnificent 
name,  was  the  son  of  a  reed-maker,  of  Irish  extraction,  at  Hyde, 
and  was  brought  up  at  first  to  follow  his  father's  trade — that  of 
making  the  wire  '  reed,'  or  frame,  into  which  the  threads  of  the 
warp  are  fastened  before  weaving.  But  such  patient  drudgery, 
often  continued,  as  it  was  in  those  days,  for  twelve  and  fourteen 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  was  gall  and  wormwood  to  a  tem- 
perament like  Daddy's.  He  developed  a  taste  for  reading,  fell  in 
with  Byron's  poems,  and  caught  the  fever  of  them  ;  then  branched 
out  into  politics  just  at  the  time  of  the  first  Reform  Bill,  when  all 
over  Lancashire  the  memory  of  Peterloo  was  still  burning,  and 
when  men  like  Henry  Hunt  and  Samuel  Bamford  were  the  political 
heroes  of  every  weaver's  cottage.  He  developed  a  taste  for 
itinerant  lecturing  and  preaching,  and  presently  left  his  family 
and  tramped  to  Manchester. 

Here  after  many  vicissitudes — including  an  enthusiastic  and 
on  the  whole  creditable  participation,  as  an  itinerant  lecturer,  in 
the  movement  for  the  founding  of  Mechanics'  Institutes,  then 
spreading  all  over  the  north — Daddy,  to  his  ill-fortune,  came 
across  his  future  brother-in-law,  the  bookseller  Purcell.  At  the 
moment  Daddy  was  in  a  new  and  unaccustomed  phase  of  piety. 
After  a  period  of  revolutionary  spouting,  in  which  Byron,  Tom 
Paine,  and  the  various  publications  of  Richard  Carlile  had  formed 
his  chief  scriptures,  a  certain  Baptist  preacher  laid  hold  of  the 
Irishman's  mercurial  sense.  Daddy  was  awakened  and  converted, 
burnt  his  Byron  and  his  Tom  Paine  in  his  three-pair  back  with 
every  circumstance  of  insult  and  contumely,  and  looked  about  for 


160  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

an  employer  worthy  of  one  of  the  elect.  Purcell  at  the  time  had 
a  shop  in  one  of  the  main  streets  connecting  Manchester  and 
Salford  ;  he  was  already  an  elder  at  the  chapel  Daddy  frequented ; 
the  two  made  acquaintance  and  Lomax  became  PurcelTs  assistant. 
At  the  moment  the  trade  offered  to  him  attracted  Daddy  vastly. 
He  had  considerable  pretensions  to  literature  ;  was  a  Shake- 
spearian, a  debater,  and  a  haunter  of  a  certain  literary  sympo- 
sium, held  for  a  long  time  at  one  of  the  old  Manchester  inns,  and 
attended  by  most  of  the  small  wits  and  poets  of  a  then  small  and 
homely  town.  The  gathering  had  nothing  saintly  about  it ;  free 
drinking  went  often  hand  in  hand  with  free  thought ;  Daddy's 
infant  zeal  was  shocked,  but  Daddy's  instincts  were  invincible, 
and  he  went. 

The  result  of  the  bookselling  experiment  has  been  already  told 
by  Daddy  himself.  It  was,  of  course,  inevitable.  Purcell  was 
then  a  young  man,  but  in  his  dealings  with  Daddy  he  showed 
precisely  the  same  cast-iron  self-importance,  the  same  slowness  of 
brain  coupled  with  the  same  assumptions  of  an  unbounded  and 
righteous  authority,  the  same  unregenerate  greediness  in  small 
matters  of  gain  and  loss  which  now  in  his  later  life  had  made  him 
odious  to  David  Grieve.  Moreover,  Daddy,  by  a  happy  instinct, 
had  at  once  made  common  cause  with  Purcell's  downtrodden 
sister,  going  on  even,  as  his  passionate  sense  of  opposition  de- 
veloped, to  make  love  to  the  poor  humble  thing  mainly  for  the 
sake  of  annoying  the  brother.  The  crisis  came  ;  the  irritated 
tyrant  brought  down  a  heavy  hand,  and  Daddy  and  Isabella 
disappeared  together  from  the  establishment  in  Chapel  Street. 

By  the  time  Daddy  had  set  up  as  the  husband  of  Purcell's 
sister  in  a  little  shop  precisely  opposite  to  that  of  his  former 
employer,  he  had  again  thrown  over  all  pretensions  to  sanctity, 
was,  on  the  contrary,  convinced  afresh  that  all  religion  was  one 
vast  perennial  imposture,  dominated,  we  may  suppose,  in  this  as 
in  most  other  matters,  by  the  demon  of  hatred  which  now 
possessed  him  towards  his  brother-in-law.  His  wife,  poor  soul, 
was  beginning  to  feel  herself  tied  for  good  to  the  tail  of  a  comet 
destined  to  some  mad  career  or  other,  and  quite  uncontrollable  by 
any  efforts  of  hers.  Lomax  had  married  her  for  the  most  unpro- 
mising reasons  in  the  world,  and  he  soon  tired  of  her,  and  of  the 
trade,  which  required  a  sustained  effort,  which  he  was  incapable 
of  giving.  As  long  as  Purcell  remained  opposite,  indeed,  hate 
and  rivalry  kept  him  up  to  the  mark.  He  was  an  attractive 
figure  at  that  time,  with  his  long  fair  hair  and  his  glancing 
greenish  eyes ;  and  his  queer  discursive  talk  attracted  many  a 
customer,  whom  he  would  have  been  quite  competent  to  keep  had 
his  character  been  of  the  same  profitable  stuff  as  his  ability. 

But  when  Purcell  vanished  across  the  river  into  Manchester, 
the  zest  of  Daddy's  bookselling  enterprise  departed  also.  He 
began  to  neglect  his  shop,  was  off  here  and  there  lecturing  and 
debating,  and  when  he  came  back  again  it  was  plain  to  the  wife 
that  their  scanty  money  had  been  squandered  on  other  excesses 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  161 

than  those  of  talk.  At  last  the  business  fell  to  ruins,  and  debts 
pressed.  Then  suddenly  Daddy  was  persuaded  by  a  French  com- 
mercial traveller  to  take  up  his  old  trade  of  reed-making,  and  go 
and  seek  employment  across  the  Channel,  where,  reed-makers 
were  said  to  be  in  demand. 

In  ecstasy  at  the  idea  of  travel  thus  presented  to  him,  Daddy 
devoured  what  books  about  France  he  could  get  hold  of,  and  tried 
to  teach  himself  French.  Then  one  morning,  without  a  word  to 
his  wife,  he  stole  downstairs  and  out  of  the  shop,  and  was  far  on 
the  road  to  London  before  his  flight  was  discovered.  His  poor 
wife  shed  some  tears,  but  he  had  ceased  to  care  for  her  she 
believed,  largely  because  she  had  brought  him  no  children,  and 
his  habits  had  begun  to  threaten  to  lead  her  with  unpleasant 
rapidity  to  the  workhouse.  So  she  took  comfort,  and  with  the 
help  of*  some  friends  set  up  a  little  stationery  and  fancy  business, 
which  just  kept  her  alive. 

Meanwhile  Lomax  found  no  work  in  Picardy,  whither  he  had 
first  gone,  and  ultimately  wandered  across  France  to  Alsace,  in 
search  of  bread,  a  prey  to  all  possible  hardships  and  privations. 
But  nothing  daunted  him.  The  glow  of  adventure  and  romance 
was  on  every  landscape.  Cathedrals,  forests,  the  wide  river-plains 
of  central  France,  with  their  lights  and  distances, — all  things  on 
this  new  earth  and  under  these  new  heavens  '  haunted  him  like  a 
passion.'  He  travelled  in  perpetual  delight,  making  love  no  doubt 
here  and  there  to  some  passing  Mignon,  and  starving  with  the 
gayest  of  hearts. 

At  Mulhausen  he  found  work,  and  being  ill  and  utterly  desti- 
tute, submitted  to  it  for  a  while.  But  as  soon  as  he  had  got 
back  his  health  and  saved  some  money,  he  set  out  again,  walking 
this  time,  staff  in  hand,  over  the  whole  Ehine  country  and  into 
the  Netherlands.  There  in  the  low  Dutch  plains  he  fell  ill  again, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  Rhineland  was  no  longer  there  to  stand  like 
a  spell  between  him  and  the  pains  of  poverty.  He  seemed  to  come 
to  himself,  after  a  dream  in  which  the  world  and  all  its  forms  had 
passed  him  by  '  apparelled  in  celestial  light.'  And  the  process  of 
self-finding  was  attended  by  some  at  least  of  those  salutary  pangs 
which  eternally  belong  to  it.  He  suddenly  took  a  resolution, 
crept  on  board  a  coal  smack  going  from  a  Dutch  port  to  Grimsby, 
toiled  across  Lincolnshire  and  Yorkshire,  and  appeared  one 
evening,  worn  to  a  shadow,  in  his  wife's  little  shop  in  Sal- 
ford. 

He  was  received  as  foolish  women  in  whom  there  is  no  ineradi- 
cable taint  of  cruelty  or  hate  will  always  receive  the  prodigal  who 
returns.  And  when  Daddy  had  been  fed  and  clothed,  he  turned 
out  for  a  time  to  be  so  amiable,  so  grateful  a  Daddy,  such  good 
company,  as  he  sat  in  the  chair  by  his  wife's  fire  and  told  stories 
of  his  travels  to  her  and  anybody  else  who  might  drop  in,  that 
not  only  the  wife  but  the  neighbourhood  was  appeased.  His  old 
friends  came  back  to  him,  he  began  to  receive  overtures  to  write 
in  some  of  the  humbler  papers,  to  lecture  on  his  adventures  in  the 


162  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

Yorkshire  and  Lancashire  towns.  Daddy  expanded,  harangued, 
grew  daily  in  good  looks  and  charm  under  his  wife's  eyes. 

At  last  one  day  the  papers  came  in  with  news  of  Louis 
Philippe's  overthrow.  Daddy  grew  restless,  and  began  to  study 
the  foreign  news  with  avidity.  Revolution  spread,  and  what  with 
democracy  abroad  and  Chartism  at  home,  there  was  more  stimulus 
in  the  air  than  such  brains  as  Daddy's  could  rightly  stand.  One 
May  day  he  walked  into  the  street,  looked  hesitatingly  up  and 
down  it,  shading  his  eyes  against  the  sun.  Then  with  a  shake  of 
his  long  hair,  as  of  one  throwing  off  a  weight,  he  drew  his  hat 
from  under  his  arm,  put  it  on,  felt  in  his  pockets,  and  set  off  at  a 
run,  head  downwards,  while  poor  Isabella  Lomax  was  sweeping 
her  kitchen.  During  the  next  few  days  he  was  heard  of,  rumour 
said,  now  here,  now  there,  but  one  might  as  well  have  attempted 
to  catch  and  hold  the  Pied  Piper. 

He  was  away  for  rather  more  than  twenty  months.  Then  one 
day,  as  before,  a  lean,  emaciated,  sun-browned  figure  came  slowly 
up  the  Salford  street,  looking  for  a  familiar  door.  It  was  Daddy. 
He  went  into  the  shop,  which  was  empty,  stared,  with  a  counte- 
nance in  which  relief  and  repulsion  were  oddly  mingled,  at  the 
boxes  of  stationery,  at  the  dusty  counter  with  its  string  and  glass 
cases,  when  suddenly  the  inside  door,  which  was  standing  ajar, 
was  pushed  stealthily  inwards,  and  a  child  stood  in  the  doorway. 
It  was  a  tottering  baby  of  a  year  old,  holding  in  one  fat  hand  a 
crust  of  bread  which  it  had  been  sucking.  When  it  saw  the 
stranger  it  looked  at  him  gravely  for  a  second.  Then  without  a 
trace  of  fear  or  shyness  it  came  forward,  holding  up  its  crust 
appealingly,  its  rosy  chin  and  lips  still  covered  with  bread-crumbs. 

Daddy  stared  at  the  apparition,  which  seemed  to  him  the 
merest  witchcraft.  For  it  was  himself,  dwarfed  to  babyhood 
and  pinafores.  His  eyes,  his  prominent  brow,  his  colour,  his 
trick  of  holding  the  head — they  were  all  there,  absurdly  there. 

He  gave  a  cry,  which  was  answered  by  another  cry  from 
behind.  His  wife  stood  in  the  door.  The  stout,  foolish  Isabella 
was  white  to  the  lips.  Even  she  felt  the  awe,  the  poetry  of  the 
moment. 

'  Aye,'  she  said,  trembling.  '  Aye  !  it's  yourn.  It  was  born 
seven  months  after  yo  left  us.' 

Daddy,  without  greeting  his  wife,  threw  himself  down  by  the 
babe,  and  burst  into  tears.  He  had  come  back  in  a  still  darker 
mood  than  on  his  first  return,  his  egotistical  belief  in  himself 
more  rudely  shaken  than  ever  by  the  attempts,  the  failures,  the 
miseries  of  the  last  eighteen  months.  For  one  illuminating 
moment  he  saw  that  he  was  a  poor  fool,  and  that  his  youth  was 
squandered  and  gone.  But  in  its  stead,  there — dropped  suddenly 
beside  him  by  the  forgiving  gods — stood  this  new  youth  sprung 
from  his,  and  all  his  own,  this  child — Dora. 

He  took  to  her  with  a  passion  which  the  trembling  Isabella 
thought  a  great  deal  too  excessive  to  last.  But  though  the 
natural  Daddy  very  soon  reappeared,  with  all  the  aggravating 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  163 

peculiarities  which  belonged  to  him,  the  passion  did  last,  and  the 
truant  strayed  no  more.  He  set  up  a  small  printing  business  with 
the  help  of  some  old  customers — it  was  always  characteristic  of 
the  man  that,  be  his  failings  what  they  might,  he  never  lacked 
friends — and  with  lecturing  and  writing,  and  Isabella's  shop,  they 
struggled  on  somehow.  Isabella's  life  was  hard  enough.  Daddy 
was  only  good  when  he  was  happy  ;  and  at  other  times  he  dipped 
recklessly  into  vices  which  would  have  been  the  ruin  of  them  all 
had  they  been  persistent.  But  by  some  kind  fate  he  always 
emerged,  and  more  and  more,  as  years  went  on,  owing  to  Dora. 
He  drank,  but  not  hopelessly  ;  he  gambled,  but  not  past  salvation  ; 
and  there  was  generally,  as  we  have  said,  some  friend  at  hand  to 
pick  the  poor  besmirched  featherbrain  out  of  the  mire. 

Dora  grew  up  not  unhappily.  There  were  shifts  and  privations 
to  put  up  with ;  there  were  stormy  days  when  life  seemed  a 
hurricane  of  words  and  tears.  But  there  were  bright  spaces  in 
between,  when  Daddy  had  good  resolutions,  or  a  little  more 
money  than  usual ;  and  with  every  year  the  daughter  instinctively 
knew  that  her  spell  over  her  father  strengthened.  She  was  on  the 
whole  a  serious  child,  with  fair  pale  hair,  much  given  to  straying 
ill  long  loose  ends  about  her  prominent  brow  and  round  cheeks. 
Yet  at  the  Baptist  school,  whither  she  was  sent,  she  was  certainly 
popular.  She  had  a  passion  for  the  little  ones  ;  and  her  grey-blue 
eyes,  over  which  in  general  the  fringed  lids  drooped  too  much, 
had  a  charming  trick  of  sudden  smiles,  when  the  soft  soul  behind 
looked  for  an  instant  clearly  and  blithely  out.  At  home  she  was 
a  little  round-shouldered  drudge  in  her  mother's  service.  At 
chapel  she  sat  very  patiently  and  happily  under  a  droning 
minister,  and  when  the  inert  and  despondent  Isabella  would  have 
let  most  of  her  religious  duties  drop,  in  the  face  of  many  troubles 
and  a  scoffing  husband,  the  child  of  fourteen  gently  and  persis- 
tently held  her  to  them. 

At  last,  however,  when  Dora  was  seventeen,  Isabella  died  of 
cancer,  and  Daddy,  who  had  been  much  shaken  and  terrified  by 
her  sufferings  in  her  last  illness,  fell  for  a  while  into  an  irritable 
melancholy,  from  which  not  even  Dora  could  divert  him.  It  was 
then  that  he  seemed  for  the  first  time  to  cross  the  line  which  had 
hitherto  divided  him  from  ruin.  The  drinking  at  the  White 
Horse,  where  the  literary  circle  met  of  which  Lomax  had  been 
so  long  an  ornament,  had  been  of  late  going  from  bad  to  worse. 
The  households  of  the  wits  concerned  were  up  in  arms ;  neigh- 
bourhood and  police  began  to  assert  themselves.  One  night  the 
trembling  Dora  waited  hour  after  hour  for  her  father.  About 
midnight  he  staggered  in,  maddened  with  drink  and  fresh  from 
a  skirmish  with  the  police.  Finding  her  there  waiting  for  him, 
pale  and  silent,  he  did  what  he  had  never  done  before  under  any 
stress  of  trouble — struck  and  swore  at  her.  Dora  sank  down  with 
a  groan,  and  in  another  minute  Lomax  was  dashing  his  head 
against  the  wall,  vowing  that  he  would  beat  his  brains  out.  In 
the  hours  that  followed,  Dora's  young  soul  was  stretched  as  it 


164  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

were  on  a  rack,  from  which  it  rose,  not  weakened,  but  with  new 
powers  and  a  loftier  stature.  All  her  girlish  levities  and  illusions 
seemed  to  drop  away  from  her.  She  saw  her  mission,  and  took 
her  squalid  (Edipus  in  charge. 

Next  morning  she  went  to  some  of  her  father's  friends, 
unknown  to  Daddy,  and  came  back  with  a  light  in  her  blanched 
face,  bearing  the  offer  of  some  work  on  a  Radical  paper  at 
Leicester.  Daddy,  now  broken  and  miserable,  submitted,  and 
off  they  went. 

At  Leicester  the  change  of  moral  and  physical  climate  produced 
for  a  while  a  wonderful  effect.  Daddy  found  himself  marvellously 
at  ease  among  the  Secularist  and  Radical  stockingers  of  the  town, 
and  soon  became  well  known  to  them  as  a  being  half  butt,  half 
oracle.  Dora  set  herself  to  learn  dressmaking,  and  did  her  best 
to  like  the  new  place  and  the  new  people.  It  was  at  Leicester,  a 
place  seething  with  social  experiment  in  its  small  provincial  way, 
with  secularism,  Owenism,  anti-vaccination,  and  much  else,  that 
Lomax  fell  a  victim  to  one  'ism  the  more — to  vegetarianism.  It 
was  there  that,  during  an  editorial  absence,  and  in  the  first 
fervour  of  conversion,  Daddy  so  belaboured  a.  carnivorous  world 
in  the  columns  of  the  '  Penny  Banner '  for  which  he  worked,  and 
so  grotesquely  and  persistently  reduced  all  the  problems  of  the 
time  to  terms  of  nitrogen  and  albumen,  that  curt  dismissal  came 
upon  him,  and  for  a  time  Dora  saw  nothing  but  her  precarious 
earnings  between  them  and  starvation.  It  was  then  also  that,  by 
virtue  of  that  queer  charm  he  could  always  exercise  when  he 
pleased,  he  laid  hold  on  a  young  Radical  manufacturer  and  got 
out  of  him  a  loan  of  200Z.  for  the  establishment  of  a  vegetarian 
restaurant  wherein  Leicester  was  to  be  taught  how  to  feed. 

But  Leicester,  alas  !  remained  unregenerate.  In  the  midst  of 
Daddy's  preparations  a  commercial  traveller,  well  known  both  to 
Manchester  and  Leicester,  repeated  to  him  one  day  a  remark  of 
Purcell's,  to  the  effect  that  since  Daddy's  migration  Manchester 
had  been  well  rid  of  a  vagabond,  and  he,  Purcell,  of  a  family 
disgrace.  Daddy,  bursting  with  fatuous  rage,  and  possessed 
besides  of  the  wildest  dreams  of  fortune  on  the  strength  of  his 
200Z.,  straightway  made  up  his  mind  to  return  to  Manchester, 
'pull  Purcell's  nose,'  and  plant  himself  and  his  prosperity  that 
was  to  be  in  the  bookseller's  eyes.  He  broke  in  upon  Dora  at 
her  work,  and  poured  into  her  astonished  ears  a  stream  of  talk, 
marked  by  a  mad  inventiveness,  partly  in  the  matter  of  vegetarian 
receipts,  still  more  in  that  of  Purcell's  future  discomforts.  When 
Daddy  was  once  launched  into  a  subject  that  suited  him,  he  was 
inexhaustible.  His  phrases  flowed  for  ever ;  of  words  he  was 
always  sure.  Like  a  certain  French  talker,  '  his  sentences  were 
like  cats  ;  he  showered  them  into  air  and  they  found  their  feet 
without  trouble.' 

Dora  sat  through  it,  bewildered  and  miserable.  Go  back  to 
Manchester  where  they  had  been  so  unhappy,  where  the  White 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  165 

Horse  and  its  crew  were  waiting  for  her  father,  simply  to  get 
into  debt  and  incur  final  ruin  for  the  sake  of  a  mad  fancy  she 
humoured  but  could  not  believe  in,  and  a  still  madder  thirst  for 
personal  vengeance  on  a  man  who  was  more  than  a  match  for 
anything  Daddy  could  do  !  She  was  in  despair. 

But  Daddy  was  obdurate,  brutal  in  his  determination  to  have 
his  way  ;  and  when  she  angered  him  with  her  remonstrances,  he 
turned  upon  her  with  an  irritable — 

'  I  know  what  it  is— damn  it  !  It's  that  Puseyite  gang  you've 
taken  up  with — you  think  of  nothing  but  them.  As  if  you 
couldn't  find  antics  and  petticoats  and  priests  in  Manchester — 
they're  everywhere — like  weeds.  Wherever  there's  a  dunghill  of 
human  credulity  they  swarm. ' 

Dora  looked  proudly  at  her  father,  as  though  disdaining  to 
reply,  gentle  creature  that  she  was  ;  then  she  bent  again  over  her 
work,  and  a  couple  of  tears  fell  on  the  seam  she  was  sewing. 

Aye,  it  was  true  enough.  In  leaving  Leicester,  after  these 
two  years,  she  was  leaving  what  to  her  had  been  a  spiritual  birth- 
place,— tearing  asunder  a  new  and  tender  growth  of  the  soul. 

This  was  how  it  had  come  about. 

On  her  first  arrival  in  Leicester,  in  a  milieu,  that  is  to  say, 
where  at  the  time  '  Gavroche,'  as  M.  Renan  calls  him — the  street 
philosopher  who  is  no  less  certain  and  no  more  rational  than  the 
street  preacher — reigned  supreme,  where  her  Secularist  father 
and  his  associates,  hot-headed  and  early  representatives  of  a 
phase  of  thought  which  has  since  then  found  much  abler,  though 
hardly  less  virulent,  expression  in  such  a  paper,  say,  as  the 
'  National  Reformer,'  were  for  ever  rending  and  trampling  on  all 
the  current  religious  images  and  ideas,  Dora  shrank  into  herself 
more  and  more.  She  had  always  been  a  Baptist  because  her 
mother  was.  But  in  her  deep  reaction  against  her  father's  asso- 
ciates, the  chapel  which  she  frequented  did  not  now  satisfy  her. 
She  hungered  for  she  knew  not  what,  certain  fastidious  artistic 
instincts  awakening  the  while  in  unexpected  ways. 

Then  one  Easter  Eve,  as  she  came  back  from  an  errand  into 
the  outskirts  of  the  town,  she  passed  a  little  iron  church  standing 
in  a  very  poor  neighbourhood,  where,  as  she  knew,  a  'Puseyite' 
curate  in  charge  officiated,  and  where  a  good  many  disturbances 
which  had  excited  the  populace  had  taken  place.  She  went  in. 
The  curate,  a  long,  gaunt  figure,  of  a  familiar  monkish  type,  was 
conducting  '  vespers '  for  the  benefit  of  some  twenty  hearers, 
mostly  women  in  black.  The  little  church  was  half  decorated  for 
Easter,  though  the  altar  had  still  its  Lenten  bareness.  Some- 
thing in  the  ordering  of  the  place,  in  its  colours,  its  scents,  in  the 
voice  of  the  priest,  in  the  short  address  he  delivered  after  the 
service,  dwelling  in  a  tone  of  intimate  emotion,  the  tone  of  the 
pastor  to  the  souls  he  guides  and  knows,  on  the  preparation  need- 
ful for  the  Easter  Eucharist,  struck  home  to  Dora.  Next  day  she 
was  present  at  the  Easter  festival.  Never  had  religion  spoken  so 
touchingly  to  her  before  as  through  these  hymns,  these  flowers, 


166  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

this  incense,  this  Eucharistic  ceremonial  wherein — being  the  mid- 
day celebration — the  congregation  were  merely  hushed  spectators 
of  the  most  pathetic  and  impressive  act  in  the  religious  symbol- 
ism of  mankind.  In  the  dark  corner  where  she  had  hidden  her- 
self, Dora  felt  the  throes  of  some  new  birth  within  her.  In  six 
weeks  from  that  time  she  had  been  admitted,  after  instruction,  to 
the  Anglican  communion. 

Thenceforward  another  existence  began  for  this  child  of 
English  Dissent,  in  whom,  however,  some  old  Celtic  leaven  seems 
to  have  always  kept  up  a  vague  unrest,  till  the  way  of  mystery 
and  poetry  was  found. 

Daddy — the  infidel  Daddy — stormed  a  good  deal,  and  lament- 
ed himself  still  more,  when  these  facts  became  known  to  him. 
Dora  had  become  a  superstitious,  priest-ridden  dolt,  of  no  good  to 
him  or  anyone  else  any  more.  What,  indeed,  was  to  become  of 
him?  Natural  affection  cannot  stand  against  the  priest.  A 
daughter  cannot  love  her  father  and  go  to  confession.  Down 
with  the  abomination — ecrasez  Tinfdme  ! 

Dora  smiled  sadly  and  went  her  way.  Against  her  sweet 
silent  tenacity  Daddy  measured  himself  in  vain.  She  would  be  a 
good  daughter  to  him,  but  she  would  be  a  good  churchwoman  first. 
He  began  to  perceive  in  her  that  germ  of  detachment  from  things 
earthly  and  human  which  all  ceremonialism  produces,  and  in  a 
sudden  terror  gave  way  and  opposed  her  no  more.  Afterwards, 
in  a  curious  way,  he  came  even  to  relish  the  change  in  her.  The 
friends  it  brought  her,  the  dainty  ordering  of  the  little  flower- 
decked  oratory  she  made  for  herself  in  one  corner  of  her  bare 
attic  room,  the  sweet  sobriety  and  refinement  which  her  new  loves 
and  aspirations  and  self-denials  brought  with  them  into  the 
house,  touched  the  poetical  instincts  which  were  always  dormant 
in  the  queer  old  fellow,  and  besides  flattered  some  strong  and 
secret  ambitions  which  he  cherished  for  his  daughter.  It 
appeared  to  him  to  have  raised  her  socially,  to  have  made  a  lady 
of  her — this  joining  the  Church.  Well,  the  women  must  have 
some  religious  bag  or  other  to  run  their  heads  into,  and  the 
Church  bag  perhaps  was  the  most  seemly. 

On  the  day  of  their  return  to  Manchester,  Daddy,  sitting  with 
crossed  arms  and  legs  in  a  corner  of  the  railway  carriage,  might 
have  sat  for  a  fairy-book  illustration  of  Rumpelstiltzchen.  His 
old  peaked  hat,  which  he  had  himself  brought  from  the  Tyrol,  fell 
forward  over  his  frowning  brow,  his  cloak  was  caught  fiercely 
about  him,  and,  as  the  quickly-passing  mill-towns  began  to  give 
notice  of  Manchester  as  soon  as  the  Derbyshire  vales  were  left 
behind,  his  glittering  eyes  disclosed  an  inward  fever— a  fever 
of  contrivance  and  of  hate.  He  was  determined  to  succeed, 
and  equally  determined  to  make  his  success  Purcell's  annoy- 
ance. 

Dora  sat  opposite,  with  her  bird-cage  on  her  knee,  looking  sad 
and  weary.  She  had  left  behind,  perhaps  for  ever,  the  dear 


CHAP,  iv  YOUTH  167 

friends  who  had  opened  to  her  the  way  of  holiness,  and  guided 
her  first  steps.  Her  eyes  filled  with  tears  of  gratitude  and  emo- 
tion as  she  thought  of  them. 

Two  things  only  were  pleasant  to  remember.  One  was  that 
the  Church  embroidery  she  had  begun  in  her  young  zeal  at 
Leicester,  using  her  odds  and  ends  of  time,  to  supplement  the 
needs  of  a  struggling  church  depending  entirely  on  voluntary 
contributions,  was  now  probably  to  become  her  trade.  For  she 
had  shown  remarkable  aptitude  for  it ;  and  she  carried  introduc- 
tions to  a  large  church- furniture  shop  in  Manchester  which  would 
almost  certainly  employ  her. 

The  other  was  the  fact  that  somewhere  in  Manchester  she 
had  a  girl-cousin — Lucy  Purcell — who  must  be  about  sixteen. 
Purcell  had  married  after  his  migration  to  Half  Street ;  his  wife 
proved  to  be  delicate  and  died  in  a  few  years  ;  this  little  girl  was 
all  that  was  left  to  him.  Dora  had  only  seen  her  once  or  twice 
in  her  life.  The  enmity  between  Lomax  and  Purcell  of  course 
kept  the  families  apart,  and,  after  her  mother's  early  death, 
Purcell  sent  his  daughter  to  a  boarding-school  and  so  washed  his 
hands  of  the  trouble  of  her  bringing  up.  But  in  spite  of  these 
barriers  Dora  well  remembered  a  slim,  long-armed  schoolgirl, 
much  dressed  and  becurled,  who  once  in  a  by-street  of  Salford 
had  run  after  her  and,  looking  round  carefully  to  see  that  no  one 
was  near,  had  thrust  an  eager  face  into  hers  and  kissed  her  sud- 
denly. 'Dora, — is  your  mother  better?  I  wish  I  could  come 
and  see  you.  Oh,  it's  horrid  of  people  to  quarrel !  But  I  mustn't 
stay, — some  one  '11  see,  and  I  should  just  catch  it !  Good-bye, 
Dora ! '  and  so  another  kiss,  very  hasty  and  frightened,  but  very 
welcome  to  the  cheek  it  touched. 

As  they  neared  Manchester,  Dora,  in  her  loneliness  of  soul, 
thought  very  tenderly  of  Lucy — wondered  how  she  had  grown  up, 
whether  she  was  pretty  and  many  other  things.  She  had  cer- 
tainly been  a  pretty  child.  Of  course  they  must  know  each  other 
and  be  friends.  Dora  could  not  let  her  father's  feud  come 
between  her  and  her  only  relation.  Purcell  might  keep  them 
apart ;  but  she  would  show  him  she  meant  no  harm ;  and  she 
would  bring  her  father  round — she  would  and  must. 

Two  years  had  gone  by.  Of  Daddy's  two  objects  in  leaving 
Leicester,  one  had  so  far  succeeded  better  than  any  rational  being 
would  have  foreseen. 

On  the  first  morning  after  their  arrival  he  went  out,  giving 
Dora  the  slip  lest  she  might  cramp  him  inconveniently  in  his 
decision ;  and  came  back  radiant,  having  taken  a  deserted  seed- 
shop  in  Market  Place,  which  had  a  long,  irregular  addition  at  the 
back,  formerly  a  warehouse,  providentially  suited,  so  Daddy 
declared,  to  the  purposes  of  a  restaurant.  The  rent  he  had 
promised  to  give  seemed  to  Dora  a  crime,  considering  their 
resources.  The  thought  of  it,  the  terror  of  the  servants  he  was 
engaging,  the  knowledge  of  the  ridicule  and  blame  with  which 


168  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

their  old  friends  regarded  her  father's  proceedings,  these  things 
kept  the  girl  awake  night  after  night. 

But  he  would  hear  no  remonstrances,  putting  all  she  had  to 
say  aside  with  an  arrogant  boastfulness,  which  never  failed. 

In  they  went.  Dora  set  her  teeth  and  did  her  best,  keeping 
as  jealous  a  watch  on  the  purse-strings  as  she  could,  and  furnish- 
ing their  three  rooms  above  the  shop  for  as  few  shillings  as  might 
be,  while  Daddy  was  painting  and  decorating,  composing  menus, 
and  ransacking  recipes  with  the  fever  of  an  artist,  now  writing 
letters  to  the  Manchester  papers,  or  lecturing  to  audiences  in  the 
Mechanics'  Institute  and  the  different  working  men's  clubs,  and 
now  plastering  the  shop-front  with  grotesque  labels,  or  posing  at 
his  own  doorway  and  buttonholing  the  passers-by  in  the  Tyrolese 
brigand's  costume  which  was  his  favourite  garb. 

The  thing  took.  There  is  a  certain  mixture  of  prophet  and 
mountebank  which  can  be  generally  counted  upon  to  hit  the 
popular  fancy,  and  Daddy  attained  to  it.  Moreover,  the  moment 
was  favourable.  After  the  terrible  strain  of  the  cotton-famine 
and  the  horrors  of  the  cholera,  Manchester  was  prosperous  again. 
Trade  was  brisk,  and  the  passage  of  the  new  Reform  Bill  had 
given  a  fresh  outlet  and  impulse  to  the  artisan  mind  which  did 
but  answer  to  the  social  and  intellectual  advance  made  by  the 
working  classes  since  '32.  The  huge  town  was  growing  fast,  was 
seething  with  life,  with  ambitions,  with  all  the  passions  and 
ingenuities  that  belong  to  gain  and  money-making  and  the  race 
for  success.  It  was  pre-eminently  a  city  of  young  men  of  all 
nationalities,  three-fourths  constantly  engaged  in  the  chasse  for 
money,  according  to  their  degrees— here  for  shillings,  there  for 
sovereigns,  there  for  thousands.  In  such  a  milieu  any  man  has 
a  chance  who  offers  to  deal  afresh  on  new  terms  with  those  daily 
needs  which  both  goad  and  fetter  the  struggling  multitude  at 
every  step.  Vegetarianism  had,  in  fact,  been  spreading  in  Man- 
chester ;  one  or  two  prominent  workmen's  papers  were  preaching 
it ;  and  just  before  Daddy's  advent  there  had  been  a  great  dinner 
in  a  public  hall,  where  the  speedy  advent  of  a  regenerate  and 
frugivorous  mankind,  with  length  of  days  in  its  right  hand,  and 
a  captivating  abundance  of  small  moneys  in  its  waistcoat  pocket, 
had  been  freely  and  ardently  prophesied. 

So  Daddy  for  once  seized  the  moment,  and  succeeded  like  the 
veriest  Philistine.  On  the  opening  day  the  restaurant  was 
crowded  from  morning  till  night.  Dora,  with  her  two  cooks  in 
the  suffocating  kitchen  behind,  had  to  send  out  the  pair  of  pant- 
ing, perspiring  kitchen-boys  again  and  again  for  fresh  supplies  ', 
while  Daddy,  at  his  wits'  end  for  waiters,  after  haranguing  a 
group  of  customers  on  the  philosophy  of  living,  amid  a  tumult  of 
mock  cheers  and  laughter,  would  rush  in  exasperated  to  Dora,  to 
say  that  never  again  would  he  trust  her  niggardly  ways — she 
would  be  the  ruin  of  him  with  her  economies. 

When  at  night  the  doors  were  shut  at  last  on  the  noise  and 
the  crowd,  and  Daddy  sat,  with  his  full  cash-box  open  on  his  knee, 


YOUTH  169 

while  the  solitary  gaslight  that  remained  threw  a  fantastic  and 
colossal  shadow  of  him  over  the  rough  floor  of  the  restaurant, 
Dora  came  up  to  him  dropping  with  fatigue.  He  looked  at  her, 
his  gaunt  face  working,  and  burst  into  tears. 

1  Dora,  we  never  had  any  money  before,  not  when — when — 
your  mother  was  alive.' 

And  she  knew  that  by  a  strange  reaction  there  had  come 
suddenly  upon  him  the  memory  of  those  ghastly  months  when 
she  and  he  through  the  long  hours  of  every  day  had  been  forced 
— baffled  and  helpless — to  watch  her  mother's  torture,  and  when 
the  sordid  struggle  for  daily  bread  was  at  its  worst,  robbing 
death  of  all  its  dignity,  and  pity  of  all  its  power  to  help. 

Do  what  she  would,  she  could  hardly  get  him  to  give  up  the 
money  and  go  to  bed.  He  was  utterly  unstrung,  and  his  triumph 
for  the  moment  lay  bitter  in  the  mouth. 

It  was  now  two  years  since  that  opening  day.  During  that 
time  the  Parlour  had  become  a  centre  after  its  sort' — a  scandal  to 
some  and  a  delight  to  others.  The  native  youth  got  his  porridge, 
and  apple  pie,  and  baked  potato  there  ;  but  the  place  was  also 
largely  haunted  by  the  foreign  clerks  of  Manchester.  There  was, 
for  instance,  a  company  of  young  Frenchmen  who  lunched  there 
habitually,  and  in  whose  society  the  delighted  Daddy  caught 
echoes  from  that  unprejudiced  life  of  Paris  or  Lyons,  which  had 
amazed  and  enlightened  his  youth.  The  place  assumed  a  stamp 
and  character.  To  Daddy  the  development  of  his  own  popularity, 
which  was  like  the  emergence  of  a  new  gift,  soon  became  a 
passion.  He  deliberately  '  ran  '  his  own  eccentricities  as  part  of 
the  business.  Hence  his  dress,  his  menus,  his  advertisements, 
and  all  the  various  antics  which  half  regaled,  half  scandalised  the 
neighbourhood.  Dora  marvelled  and  winced,  and  by  dint  of  an 
habitual  tolerance  retained  the  power  of  stopping  some  occasional 
enormity. 

As  to  finances,  they  were  not  making  their  fortune  ;  far  from 
it ;  but  to  Dora's  amazement,  considering  her  own  inexperience 
and  her  father's  flightiness,  they  had  paid  their  way  and  some- 
thing more.  She  was  no  born  woman  of  business,  as  any  profes- 
sional accountant  examining  her  books  might  have  discovered. 
But  she  had  a  passionate  determination  to  defraud  no  one,  and 
somehow,  through  much  toil  her  conscience  did  the  work.  Mean- 
while every  month  it  astonished  her  freshly  that  they  two  should 
be  succeeding  !  Success  was  so  little  in  the  tradition  of  their 
tattered  and  variegated  lives.  Could  it  last  ?  At  the  bottom  of 
her  mind  lay  a  constant  presentiment  of  new  change,  founded  no 
doubt  on  her  knowledge  of  her  father. 

But  outwardly  there  was  little  to  justify  it.  The  craving  for 
drink  seemed  to  have  left  him  altogether — a  not  uncommon  effect 
of  this  particular  change  of  diet.  And  his  hatred  of  Purcell, 
though  in  itself  it  had  proved  quite  unmanageable  by  all  her  arts, 
had  done  nobody  much  harm.  In  a  society  dependent  on  law 


170  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

and  police  there  are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  man's  dealing 
primitively  with  his  enemy.  There  had  been  one  or  two  awkward 
meetings  between  the  two  in  the  open  street ;  and  at  the  Parlour, 
among  his  special  intimates,  Daddy  had  elaborated  a  Purcell 
myth  of  a  Pecksniffian  character  which  his  invention  perpetually 
enriched.  On  the  whole,  however,  it  was  in  his  liking  for  young 
Grieve,  originally  a  casual  customer  at  the  restaurant,  that  Dora 
saw  the  chief  effects  of  the  feud.  He  had  taken  the  lad  up 
eagerly  as  soon  as  he  had  discovered  both  his  connection  with 
Purcell  and  his  daring  rebellious  temper  ;  had  backed  him  up  in 
all  his  quarrels  with  his  master  ;  had  taken  him  to  the  Hall  of 
Science,  and  introduced  him  to  the  speakers  there  ;  and  had 
generally  paraded  him  as  a  secularist  convert,  snatched  from  the 
very  jaws  of  the  Baptist. 

And  now  ! — now  that  David  was  in  open  opposition,  attracting 
Purcell's  customers,  taking  Purcell's  water,  Daddy  was  in  a  tumult 
of  delight :  wheeling  off  old  books  of  his  own,  such  as  '  The  Jour- 
nal of  Theology'  and  the  'British  Controversialist,'  to  fill  up 
David's  stall,  running  down  whenever  business  was  slack  to  see 
how  the  lad  was  getting  on  ;  and  meanwhile  advertising  him  with 
his  usual  extravagance  among  the  frequenters  of  the  Parlour. 

All  through,  however,  or  rather  since  Miss  Purcell  had 
returned  from  school,  Dora  and  her  little  cousin  Lucy  had  been 
allowed  to  meet,  Lomax  saw  his  daughter  depart  on  her  visits  to 
Half  Street,  in  silence  ;  Purcell,  when  he  first  recognised  her, 
hardly  spoke  to  her.  Dora  believed,  what  was  in  fact  the  truth, 
that  each  regarded  her  as  a  means  of  keeping  an  eye  on  the 
other.  She  conveyed  information  from  the  hostile  camp — there- 
fore she  was  let  alone. 


CHAPTER  V 

'  WHY— Lucy  ! ' 

Dora  was  still  bending  over  her  work  when  a  well-known  tap 
at  the  door  startled  her  meditations. 

Lucy  put  her  head  in,  and,  finding  Dora  alone,  came  in  with  a 
look  of  relief.  Settling  herself  in  a  chair  opposite  Dora,  she  took 
off  her  hat,  smoothed  the  coils  of  hair  to  which  it  had  been  pinned, 
unbuttoned  the  smart  little  jacket  of  pilot  cloth,  and  threw  back 
the  silk  handkerchief  inside  ;  and  all  with  a  feverish  haste  and 
irritation  as  though  everything  she  touched  vexed  her. 

'  What's  the  matter,  'Lucy  ? '  said  Dora,  after  a  little  pause. 
At  the  moment  of  Lucy's  entrance  she  had  been  absorbed  in  a 
measurement. 

'  Nothing  ! '  said  Lucy  quickly.  '  Dora,  you've  got  your  hair 
loose  ! ' 

Dora  put  up  her  hand  patiently.  She  was  accustomed  to  be 
put  to  rights.  It  was  characteristic  at  once  of  her  dreaminess  and 
her  powers  of  self -discipline  that  she  was  fairly  orderly,  though 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  171 

she  had  great  difficulty  in  being  so.  Without  a  constant  struggle, 
she  would  have  had  loose  plaits  and  hanging  strings  about  her 
always.  Lucy's  trimness  was  a  perpetual  marvel  to  her.  It  was 
like  the  contrast  between  the  soft  indeterminate  "lines  of  her 
charming  face  and  Lucy's  small,  sharply  cut  features. 

Lucy,  still  restless,  began  tormenting  the  feather  in  her 
hat. 

'  When  are  you  going  to  finish  that,  Dora  ? '  she  asked,  nodding 
towards  the  frame. 

'  Oh  it  won't  be  very  long  now,'  said  Dora,  putting  her  head  on 
one  side  that  she  might  take  a  general  survey,  at  once  loving  and 
critical,  of  her  work. 

'  You  oughtn't  to  sit  so  close  at  it,'  said  Lucy  decidedly ; 
'  you'll  spoil  your  complexion.' 

'  I've  none  to  spoil.' 

'  Oh,  yes,  you  have,  Dora — that's  so  silly  of  you.  You  aren't 
sallow  a  bit.  It's  pretty  to  be  pale  like  that.  Lots  of  people  say 
so — not  quite  so  pale  as  you  are  sometimes,  perhaps — but  I  know 
why  that  is,'  said  Lucy,  with  a  half -malicious  emphasis. 

A  slight  pink  rose  in  Dora's  cheeks,  but  she  bent  over  her 
frame  and  said  nothing. 

'  Does  your  clergyman  tell  you  to  fast  in  Lent,  Dora — who 
tells  you  ? ' 

'  The  Church  ! '  replied  Dora,  scandalised  and  looking  up  with 
bright  eyes.  '  I  wish  you  understood  things  a  little  more,  Lucy.' 

'  I  can't,'  said  Lucy,  with  a  pettish  sigh,  '  and  I  don't  care 
twopence  ! ' 

She  threw  herself  back  in  her  rickety  chair.  Her  arm  dropped 
over  the  side,  and  she  lay  staring  at  the  ceiling.  Dora  went  on 
with  her  work  in  silence  for  a  minute,  and  then  looked  up  to  see 
a  tear  dropping  from  Lucy's  cheek  on  to  the  horsehair  covering 
of  the  chair. 

'  Lucy,  what  is  the  matter  ?  — I  knew  there  was  something 
wrong ! ' 

Lucy  sat  up  and  groped  energetically  for  her  handkerchief. 

'  You  wouldn't  care,'  she  said,  her  lips  quivering — '  nobody 
cares  ! ' 

And,  sinking  down  again,  she  hid  her  face  and  fairly  burst 
out  sobbing.  Dora,  in  alarm,  pushed  aside  her  frame  and  tried 
to  caress  and  console  her.  But  Lucy  held  her  off,  and  in  a  second 
or  two  was  angrily  drying  her  eyes. 

'  Oh,  you  can't  do  any  good,  Dora — not  the  least  good.  It's 
father — you  know  well  enough  what  it  is — I  shall  never  get  on 
with  father  if  I  live  to  be  a  hundred  ! ' 

'  Well,  you  haven't  had  long  to  try  in,'  said  Dora,  smiling. 

'  Quite  long  enough  to  know,'  replied  Lucy,  drearily.  '  I  know 
I  shall  have  a  horrid  life — I  must.  Nobody  can  help  it.  Do  you 
know  we've  got  another  shopman,  Dora  ? ' 

The  tone  of  childish  scorn  she  threw  into  the  question  was 
inimitable.  Dora  with  difficulty  kept  from  laughing. 


172  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

'  Well,  what's  he  like  ? ' 

'  Like  f  He's  like — like  nothing,'  said  Lucy,  whose  vocabu- 
lary was  not  extensive.  '  He's  fat  and  ugly — wears  spectacles. 
Father  says  he's  a  treasure — to  me — and  then  when  they're  in 
the  shop  I  hear  him  going  on  at  him  like  anything  for  being  a 
stupid.  And  I  have  to  give  the  creature  tea  when  father's  away. 
He's  so  shy  he  always  upsets  something.  Mary  Ann  and  I  have 
to  clear  up  after  him  as  though  he  were  a  school-child. — And 
father  gets  in  a  regular  passion  if  I  ask  him  about  the  dance — 
and  there's  a  missionary  tea  next  week,  and  he's  made  me  take 
a  table — and  he  wants  me  to  teach  in  Sunday  School — and  the 
minister's  wife  has  been  talking  to  him  about  my  dress — and — 
and — No,  I  can't  stand  it,  Dora — I  can't  and  I  won't ! ' 

And  Lucy,  gulping  down  fresh  tears,  sat  intensely  upright, 
and  looked  frowningly  at  Dora  as  though  defying  her  to  take  the 
matter  lightly. 

Dora  was  perplexed.  Deep  in  her  dove-like  soul  lay  the  fiercest 
views  about  Dissent — that  rent  in  the  seamless  vesture  of  Christ, 
as  she  had  learnt  to  consider  it.  Her  mother  had  been  a  Baptist 
till  her  death,  she  herself  till  she  was  grown  up.  But  now  she 
had  all  the  zeal — nay,  even  the  rancour — of  the  convert.  It  was 
one  of  her  inmost  griefs  that  her  own  change  had  not  come  earlier 
— before  her  mother's  death.  Then  perhaps  her  mother,  her  poor 
— poor — mother,  might  have  changed  with  her.  It  went  against 
her  to  urge  Lucy  to  make  herself  a  good  Baptist. 

'  It's  no  wonder  Uncle  Tom  wants  you  to  do  what  he  likes,'  she 
said  slowly.  '  But  if  you  don't  take  to  chapel,  Lucy — if  you  want 
something  different,  perhaps — 

'Oh,  I  don't  want  any  church,  thank  you,'  cried  Lucy,  up  in 
arms.  '  I  don't  want  anybody  ordering  me  about.  "Why  can't  I 
go  my  own  way  a  bit,  and  amuse  myself  as  I  please  ?  It  is  too, 
too  bad  ! ' 

Dora  did  not  know  what  more  to  say.  She  went  on  with  her 
work,  thinking  about  it  all.  Suddenly  Lucy  astonished  her  by  a 
question  in  another  voice. 

'  Have  you  seen  Mr.  Grieve's  shop,  Dora  ? ' 

Dora  looked  up. 

'  No.  Father's  been  there  a  good  many  times.  He  says  it's 
capital  for  a  beginning  and  he's  sure  to  get  on  fast.  There's  one 
or  two  very  good  sort  of  customers  been  coming  lately.  There's 
the  Earl  of  Driffield,  I  think  it  is — don't  you  remember,  Lucy,  it 
was  he  gave  that  lecture  with  the  magic  lantern  at  the  Institute 
you  and  I  went  to  last  summer.  He's  a  queer  sort  of  gentleman. 
Well,  he's  been  coming  several  times  and  giving  orders.  And 
there's  some  of  the  college  gentlemen  ;  oh,  and  a  lot  of  others. 
They  all  seem  to  think  he's  so  clever,  father  says — 

'  I  know  the  Earl  of  Driliield  quite  well,'  said  Lucy  loftily. 
'  He  used  to  be  always  coming  to  our  place,  and  I've  tied  up  his 
books  for  him  sometimes.  I  don't  see  what's  the  good  of  being  an 
earl — not  to  go  about  like  that.  And  father  says  he's  got  a  grand 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  173 

place  near  Stalybridge  too.  Well,  if  he's  gone  to  Mr.  Grieve, 
father  '11  be  just  mad.'  Lucy  pursed  up  her  small  mouth  with 
energy.  Dora  evaded  the  subject. 

'He  says  when  he's  quite  settled,'  she  resumed  presently, 
'  we're  to  go  and  have  supper  with  him  for  a  house-warming.' 

Lucy  looked  ready  to  cry  again. 

'  He  couldn't  ask  me — of  course  he  couldn't,'  she  said,  indis- 
tinctly. '  Dora — Dora  ! ' 

'  Well  ?  Oh,  don't  mix  up  my  silks,  Lucy  ;  I  shall  never  get 
them  right  again.' 

Lucy  reluctantly  put  them  down. 

'  Do  you  think,  Dora,  Mr.  Grieve  cares  anything  at  all  about 
me  ? '  she  said  at  last,  hurrying  out  the  words,  and  looking  Dora 
in  the  face,  very  red  and  bold. 

Dora  laughed  outright. 

'  I  knew  you  were  going  to  ask  that ! '  she  said.  '  Perhaps  I've 
been  asking  myself  ! ' 

Lucy  said  nothing,  but  the  tears  dropped  again  down  her 
cheeks  and  on  to  her  small  quivering  hands — all  the  woman 
awake  in  her. 

Dora  pushed  her  frame  away,  and  put  her  arm  round  her 
cousin,  quite  at  a  loss  what  to  say  for  the  best. 

Another  woman  would  have  told  Lucy  plurnply  that  she  was  a 
little  fool ;  that  in  the  first  place  young  Grieve  had  never  shown 
any  signs  of  making  love  to  her  at  all ;  and  that,  in  the  second, 
if  he  had,  her  father  would  never  let  her  marry  him  without  a 
struggle  which  nobody  could  suppose  Lucy  capable  of  waging  with 
a  man  like  Purcell.  It  was  all  a  silly  fancy,  the  whim  of  a  green 
girl,  which  would  make  her  miserable  for  nothing.  Mrs.  Alderman 
Head,  for  instance,  Dora's  chaperon  for  the  Institute  dance,  the 
sensible,  sharp-tongued  wife  of  a  wholesale  stationer  in  Market 
Street,  would  certainly  have  taken  this  view  of  the  matter,  and 
communicated  it  to  Lucy  with  no  more  demur  than  if  you  had 
asked  her,  say,  for  her  opinion  on  the  proper  season  for  bottling 
gooseberries.  But  Dora,  whose  inmost  being  was  one  tremulous 
surge  of  feeling  and  emotion,  could  not  approach  any  matter  of 
love  and  marriage  without  a  thrill,  without  a  sense  of  tragedy 
almost.  Besides,  like  Lucy,  she  was  very  young  still — just  twenty 
— and  youth  answers  to  youth. 

'  You  know  Uncle  Tom  wouldn't  like  it  a  bit,  Lucy,'  she  began 
in  her  perplexity. 

'  I  don't  care  ! '  cried  Lucy,  passionately.  '  Girls  can't  marry 
to  please  their  fathers.  I  should  have  to  wait,  I  suppose.  I 
would  get  my  own  way  somehow.  But  what's  the  good  of  talking 
about  it,  Dora  ?  I'm  sick  of  thinking  about  it — sick  of  everything. 
He'll  marry  somebody  else — I  know  he  will — and  I  shall  break 
my  heart,  or — ' 

'Marry  somebody  else,  too,'  suggested  Dora  slyly. 

Lucy  drew  herself  angrily  away,  and  had  to  be  soothed  into 
forgiving  her  cousin.  The  child  had,  in  fact,  thought  and  worried 


174  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

herself  by  now  into  such  a  sincere  belief  in  her  own  passion,  that 
there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  take  it  seriously.  Dora  yielded 
herself  to  Lucy's  tears  and  her  own  tenderness.  She  sat 
pondering. 

Then,  suddenly,  she  said  something  very  different  from  what 
Lucy  expected  her  to  say. 

'  Oh !  if  I  could  get  him  to  go  and  talk  to  Father  Kussell ! 
He's  so  wonderful  with  young  men.' 

Her  hand  dropped  on  to  her  knee  ;  she  looked  away  from  Lucy 
out  of  the  window,  her  sweet  face  one  longing. 

Lucy  was  startled,  and  somewhat  annoyed.  In  her  disgust 
with  her  father  and  her  anxiety  to  attract  David's  notice,  she  had 
so  entirely  forgotten  his  religious  delinquencies,  that  it  seemed 
fussy  and  intrusive  on  Dora's  part  to  make  so  much  of  them. 
She  instinctively  resented,  too,  what  sounded  to  her  like  a  tone  of 
proprietary  interest.  It  was  not  Dora  that  was  his  friend — it  was 
she  ! 

'  I  don't  see  what  you  have  to  do  with  his  opinions,  Dora,'  she 
said  stiffly ;  '  he  isn't  rude  to  you  now  as  he  used  to  be.  Young 
men  are  always  wild  a  bit  at  first. ' 

And  she  tossed  her  head  with  all  the  worldly  wisdom  of 
seventeen. 

Dora  sighed  and  was  silent.  She  fell  to  her  work  again,  while 
Lucy  wandered  restlessly  about  the  room.  Presently  the  child 
stopped  short. 

'  Oh  !  look  here,  Dora — ' 

'Yes.' 

'  Do  come  round  with  me  and  look  at  some  spring  patterns 
I've  got.  You  might  just  as  well.  I  know  you've  been  slaving 
your  eyes  out,  and  it's  a  nice  day.' 

Dora  hesitated,  but  finally  consented.  She  had  been  at  work 
for  many  hours  in  hot  rooms,  and  meant  to  work  a  good  many 
more  yet  before  night.  A  break  would  revive  her,  and  there  was 
ample  time  before  the  three  o'clock  dinner  which  she  and  her 
father  took  together  after  the  midday  rush  of  the  restaurant  was 
over.  So  she  put  on  her  things. 

On  their  way  Dora  looked  into  the  kitchen.  Everything  was 
in  full  work.  A  stout,  red-faced  woman  was  distributing  and 
superintending.  On  the  long  charcoal  stove  which  Daddy  under 
old  Barbier's  advice  had  just  put  up,  on  the  hot  plates  near,  and 
the  glowing  range  in  the  background,  innumerable  pans  were 
simmering  and  steaming.  Here  was  a  table  covered  with  stewed 
fruits  ;  there  another  laden  with  round  vegetable  pies  just  out  of 
the  oven — while  a  heap  of  tomatoes  on  a  third  lent  their  scarlet 
to  the  busy  picture.  Some  rays  of  wintry  sun  had  slipped  in 
through  the  high  windows,  and  were  contending  with  the  steam 
of  the  pies  and  the  smoke  from  the  cooking.  And  in  front  of 
all  on  an  upturned  box  sat  a  pair  of  Lancashire  lasses,  peeling 
apples  at  lightning  speed,  yet  not  so  fast  but  they  could  laugh  and 
chat  the  while,  their  bright  eyes  wandering  perpetually  through 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  175 

the  open  serving  hatches  which  ran  along  one  side  of  the  room, 
to  the  restaurant  stretching  beyond,  with  its  rows  of  well-filled 
tables  and  its  passing  waitresses  in  their  white  caps  and  aprons. 

Dora  slipped  in  among  them  in  her  soft  deprecating  way, 
smiling  at  this  one  and  that  till  she  came  to  the  stout  cook. 
There  she  stopped  and  asked  something.  Lucy,  standing  at  the 
door,  saw  the  huge  woman  draw  a  corner  of  her  apron  across  her 


'  What  did  you  want,  Dora  ? '  she  inquired  as  her  cousin  re- 
joined her. 

'  It's  her  poor  boy.  He's  in  the  Infirmary  and  very  bad.  I'm 
sure  they  think  he's  dying.  I  wanted  to  send  her  there  this 
morning  and  do  her  work,  but  she  wouldn't  go.  There's  no  more 
news — but  we  mustn't  be  long. ' 

She  walked  on,  evidently  thinking  with  a  tender  absorption  of 
the  mother  and  son,  while  Lucy  was  conscious  of  her  usual  im- 
patience with  all  this  endless  concern  for  unknown  people,  which 
stood  so  much  in  the  way  of  Dora's  giving  her  full  mind  to  her 
cousin's  affairs. 

Yet,  as  she  knew  well,  Sarah,  the  stout  cook,  had  been  the 
chief  prop  of  the  Parlour  ever  since  it  opened.  No  other  servant 
had  stayed  long  with  Daddy.  He  was  too  fantastic  and  exacting 
a  master.  She  had  stayed — for  Dora's  sake — and,  from  bearing 
with  him,  had  learnt  to  manage  him.  When  she  came  she 
brought  with  her  a  sickly,  overgrown  lad,  the  only  son  of  her 
widowhood,  to  act  as  kitchen-boy.  He  did  his  poor  best  for  a 
while,  his  mother  in  truth  getting  through  most  of  his  work  as 
well  as  her  own,  while  Dora,  who  had  the  weakness  for  doctoring 
inherent  in  all  good  Avoruen,  stuffed  him  with  cod-liver  oil  and 
'strengthening  mixtures.'  Then  symptoms  of  acute  hip-disease 
showed  themselves,  and  the  lad  was  admitted  to  the  big  Infirmary 
in  Piccadilly.  There  he  had  lain  for  some  six  or  eight  weeks  now, 
toiling  no  more,  fretting  no  more,  living  on  his  mother's  and 
Dora's  visits,  and  quietly  loosening  one  life-tendril  after  another. 
During  all  this  time  Dora  had  thought  of  him,  prayed  for  him, 
taught  him — the  wasted,  piteous  creature. 

When  they  arrived  at  Half  Street,  they  let  themselves  in  by 
the  side-door,  and  Lucy  hurried  her  cousin  into  the  parlour  that 
there  might  be  no  meeting  with  her  father,  with  whom  she  was  on 
decidedly  uncomfortable  terms. 

The  table  in  the  parlour  was  strewn  with  patterns  from  several 
London  shops.  To  send  for  them,  examine  them,  and  imagine 
what  they  would  look  like  when  made  up  was  now  Lucy's  chief 
occupation.  To  which  might  be  added  a  little  strumming  on  the 
piano,  a  little  visiting — not  much,  for  she  hated  most  of  her 
father's  friends,  and  was  at  present  too  closely  taken  up  with  self- 
pity  and  speculations  as  to  what  David  Grieve  might  be  doing  to 
make  new  ones — and  a  great  deal  of  ordering  about  of  Mary 
Ann. 


176  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

Dora  sat  down,  and  Lucy  pounced  on  one  pattern  after 
another,  folding  them  between  her  fingers  and  explaining  eagerly 
how  this  or  that  would  look  if  it  were  cut  so,  or  trimmed  so. 

'  Oh,  Dora,  look — this  pink  gingham  with  white  spots  !  Don't 
you  think  it's  a  love?  And,  you  know,  pink  always  suits  me, 
except  when  it's  a  blue-pink.  But  you  don't  call  that  a  blue- 
pink,  do  you  ?  And  yet  it  isn't  salmon,  certainly — it's  something 
between.  It  ought  to  suit  me,  but  I  declare — '  and  suddenly,  to 
Dora's  dismay,  the  child  flung  down  the  patterns  she  held  with  a 
passionate  vehemence — '  I  declare  nothing  seems  to  suit  me  now  ! 
Dora  ! ' — in  a  tone  of  despair — '  Dora  !  don't  you  think  I'm  going 
off?  My  complexion's  all  dull,  and — and — why  I  might  be 
thirty  ! '  and  running  over  to  the  glass,  draped  in  green  cut-paper, 
which  adorned  the  mantelpiece,  Lucy  stood  before  it  examining 
herself  in  an  agony.  And,  indeed,  there  was  a  change.  A  touch 
of  some  withering  blight  seemed  to  have  swept  across  the  whole 
dainty  face,  and  taken  the  dewy  freshness  from  the  eyes.  There 
was  fever  in  it — the  fever  of  fret  and  mutiny  and  of  a  starved 
self-love. 

Dora  looked  at  her  cousin  with  less  patience  than  usual — 
perhaps  because  of  the  inevitable  contrast  between  Lucy's  posings 
and  the  true  heartaches  of  the  world. 

'  Lucy,  what  nonsense  !  You're  just  a  bit  worried,  and  you 
make  such  a  lot  of  it.  Why  can't  you  be  patient  ? ' 

'  Because  I  can't ! '  said  Lucy,  sombrely,  dropping  into  a  chair, 
and  letting  her  arm  fall  over  the  back.  '  It's  all  very  well,  Dora. 
You  aren't  in  love  with  a  man  whom  you  never  see,  and  whom 
your  father  has  a  spite  on  !  And  you  won't  do  anything  to  help 
me — you  won't  move  a  finger.  And,  of  course,  you  might ! ' 

'  What  could  I  do,  Lucy  ? '  cried  Dora,  exasperated.  "  I  can't 
go  and  ask  young  Grieve  to  marry  you.  I  do  wish  you'd  try  and 
put  him  out  of  your  head,  that  I  do.  You're  too  young,  and  he's 
got  his  business  to  think  about.  And  while  Uncle  Tom's  like 
this,  I  can't  be  always  putting  myself  forward  to  help  you  meet 
him.  It  would  be  just  the  way  to  make  him  think  something  bad 
— to  make  him  suspect — ' 

'  Well,  and  why  should  n't  he  suspect?'  said  Lucy,  obstinately, 
her  little  mouth  set  and  hard  ;  '  it's  all  rubbish  about  girls  leaving 
it  all  to  the  men.  If  a  girl  doesn't  show  she  cares  about  a  man, 
how's  he  to  know — and  when  she  don't  meet  him — and  when  her 
father  keeps  her  shut  up — shameful ! ' 

She  flung  the  word  out  through  her  small,  shut  teeth,  the 
brows  meeting  over  her  flashing  eyes. 

'  Oh  !  it's  shameful,  is  it — eh,  Miss  Purcell  ? '  said  a  harsh, 
mimicking  voice  coming  from  the  dark  passage  leading  into  the 
shop. 

Lucy  sprang  up  in  terror.  There  on  the  steps  stood  her 
father,  bigger,  blacker,  more  formidable  than  he  had  ever  been  in 
the  eyes  of  the  two  startled  girls.  All  unknown  to  them,  the  two 
doors  which  parted  them  from  the  shop  had  been  slightly  ajar, 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  177 

and  Purcell,  catching  their  voices  as  they  came  in,  and  already  on 
the  watch  for  his  daughter,  had  maintained  a  treacherous  quiet 
behind  them.  Now  he  was  entirely  in  his  element.  He  surveyed 
them  both  with  a  dark,  contemptuous  triumph.  -What  fools 
women  were  to  be  sure  ! 

As  he  descended  the  two  steps  into  the  parlour  the  floor  shook 
under  his  heavy  tread.  Dora  had  instinctively  thrown  her  arm 
round  Lucy,  who  had  begun  to  cry  hysterically.  She  herself  was 
very  pale,  but  after  the  first  start  she  looked  her  uncle  in  the 
face. 

'  Is  it  you  that's  been  teaching  Lucy  these  beautiful  senti- 
ments ? '  said  Purcell,  with  ironical  emphasis,  stopping  a  yard 
from  them  and  pointing  at  Dora,  '  and  do  you  get  'em  from  St. 
Damian's  ? ' 

Dora  threw  up  her  head,  and  flushed.  '  I  get  nothing  from 
St.  Damian's  that  I'm  ashamed  of,'  she  said  in  a  proud  voice, 
'  and  I've  done  nothing  with  Lucy  that  I'm  ashamed  of. ' 

'  No,  I  suppose  not,'  said  Purcell  dryly  ;  '  the  devil  don't  deal 
much  in  shame.  It's  a  losing  article.' 

Then  he  looked  at  Lucy,  and  his  expression  suddenly  changed. 
The  flame  beneath  leapt  to  sight.  He  caught  her  arm,  dragged 
her  out  of  Dora's  hold,  and  shook  her  as  one  might  shake  a 
kitten. 

'  Who  were  you  talking  of  just  now  ? '  he  said  to  her,  holding 
her  by  both  shoulders,  his  eyes  blazing  down  upon  her. 

Lucy  was  much  too  frightened  to  speak.  She  stood  staring 
back  at  him,  her  breast  heaving  violently. 

Dora  came  forward  in  indignation. 

'  You'll  get  nothing  out  of  her  if  you  treat  her  like  that,'  she 
said,  with  spirit,  '  nor  out  of  me  either. ' 

Purcell  recovered  himself  with  difficulty.  He  let  Lucy  go,  and 
walking  up  to  the  mantelpiece  stood  there,  leaning  his  arm  upon 
it,  and  looking  at  the  girls  from  under  his  hand. 

'  What  do  I  want  to  get  out  of  you  ? '  he  said,  with  scorn. 
'  As  if  I  didn't  know  already  everything  that's  in  your  silly 
minds  !  I  guessed  already,  and  now  that  you  have  been  so 
obliging  as  to  let  your  secrets  out  under  my  very  nose — I  know  ! 
That  chit  there ' — he  pointed  to  Lucy — all  his  gestures  had  a 
certain  theatrical  force  and  exaggeration,  springing,  perhaps, 
from  his  habit  of  lay  preaching — '  imagines  she  going  to  marry 
the  young  infidel  I  gave  the  sack  to  a  while  ago.  Now  don't  she  ? 
Are  you  going  to  say  no  to  that  ? ' 

His  loud  challenge  pushed  Dora  to  extremities,  and  it  was  all 
left  to  her.  Lucy  was  sobbing  on  the  sofa. 

'  I  don't  know  what  she  imagines,'  said  Dora,  slowly,  seeking 
in  vain  for  words  ;  the  whole  situation  was  so  ridiculous.  '  Are 
you  going  to  prevent  her  falling  in  love  with  the  man  she 
chooses  ? ' 

'  Certainly  ! '  said  Purcell,  with  mocking  emphasis.  '  Cer- 
tainly— since  she  chooses  wrong.  The  only  concern  of  the  godly 


178  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

in  these  matters  is  to  see  that  their  children  are  not  yoked  with 
unbelievers.  Whenever  I  see  that  young  reprobate  in  the  street 
now,  I  smell  the  pit.  And  it'll  not  be  long  before  the  Lord 
tumbles  him  into  it ;  there's  an  end  comes  to  such  devil's  fry  as 
that.  Oh,  they  may  prosper  and  thrive,  they  may  revile  the 
children  of  the  Lord,  they  may  lift  up  the  hoof  against  the  poor 
Christian,  but  the  time  comes — the  time  comes.'1 

His  solemnity,  at  once  unctuous  and  full  of  vicious  meaning, 
only  irritated  Dora.  But  Lucy  raised  herself  from  the  sofa,  and 
looked  suddenly  round  at  her  father.  Her  eyes  were  streaming, 
her  hair  in  disorder,  but  there  was  a  suspicion  and  intelligence  in 
her  look  which  seemed  to  give  her  back  self-control.  She  watched 
eagerly  for  what  her  father  might  say  or  do  next. 

As  soon  as  he  saw  her  sitting  up  he  walked  over  to  her  and 
took  her  again  by  the  shoulder. 

'  Now  look  here,'  he  said  to  her,  holding  her  tight,  '  let's  finish 
with  this.  That  young  man's  the  Lord's  enemy — he's  my  enemy 
— and  I'll  teach  him  a  lesson  before  I've  done.  But  that's  neither 
here  nor  there.  You  understand  this.  If  you  ever  walk  out  of 
this  door  with  him,  you'll  not  walk  back  into  it,  with  him  or 
without  him.  I'd  have  done  with  you,  and  my  money  'Id  have 
done  with  you.  But  there ' — and  Purcell  gave  a  little  scornful 
laugh,  and  let  her  go  with  a  push — '  he  don't  care  twopence  about 
you — I'll  say  that  for  him.' 

Lucy  flushed  fiercely,  and  getting  up  began  mechanically  to 
smooth  her  hair  before  the  glass,  with  wild  tremulous  move- 
ments, will  and  defiance  settling  on  her  lip,  as  she  looked  at 
herself  and  at  the  reflection  of  her  father. 

'And  as  for  you,  Miss  Lomax,'  said  Purcell  deliberately, 
standing  opposite  Dora,  '  you've  been  aiding  and  abetting  some- 
how— I  don't  care  how.  I  don't  complain.  There  was  nothing 
better  to  be  expected  of  a  girl  with  your  parentage  and  bringing 
up,  and  a  Puseyite  into  the  bargain.  But  I  warn  you  you'll  go 
meddling  here  once  too  often  before  you've  done.  If  you'll  take 
my  advice  you'll  let  other  people's  business  alone,  and  mind  your 
own.  Them  that  have  got  Adrian  Lomax  on  their  hands  needn't 
go  poaching  on  their  neighbours  for  something  to  do.' 

He  spoke  with  a  slow,  vindictive  emphasis,  and  Dora  shrank 
and  quivered  as  though  he  had  struck  her.  Then  by  a  great 
effort — the  effort  of  one  who  had  not  gone  through  a  close  and 
tender  training  of  the  soul  for  nothing — she  put  from  her  both 
her  anger  and  her  fear. 

'You're  cruel  to  father,'  she  said,  her  voice  fluttering;  'you 
might  be  thinking  sometimes  how  straight  he's  kept  since  he  took 
the  Parlour.  And  I  don't  believe  young  Grieve  means  any  harm 
to  you  or  anybody — and  I'm  sure  I  don't.' 

A  sob  rose  in  her  throat.  Anybody  less  crassly  armoured  in 
self-love  than  Purcell  must  have  been  touched.  As  for  him,  he 
turned  on  his  heel. 

'  I'll  protect  myself,  thank  you,'  he  said  dryly  ;  '  and  I'll  judge 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  179 

for  myself.  You  can  do  as  you  like,  and  Lucy  too,  so  long  as  she 
takes  the  consequences.  Do  you  understand,  Lucy  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  said  Lucy,  facing  round  upon  him,  all  tremulous  passion 
and  rebellion,  but  she  could  not  meet  his  fixed,  tyrannical  eye. 
Her  own  wavered  and  sank.  Purcell  enjoyed  the  spectacle  of  her 
for  a  second  or  two,  smiled,  and  went. 

As  soon  as  he  was  gone,  Lucy  dragged  her  cousin  to  the  stairs, 
and  never  let  her  go  till  Dora  was  safe  in  her  room  and  the  door 
bolted. 

Dora  implored  to  be  released.  How  could  she  stay  in  her 
uncle's  house  after  such  a  scene  ?  and  she  must  get  home  quickly 
anyway,  as  Lucy  knew. 

Lucy  took  no  notice  at  all  of  what  she  was  saying. 

'Look  here.'  she  said,  breaking  into  the  middle  of  Dora's 
appeal,  and  speaking  in  an  excited  whisper — '  he's  going  to  do 
him  a  mischief.  I'm  certain  he  is.  That's  how  he  looks  when 
he's  going  to  pay  some  one  out.  Now,  what's  he  going  to  do  ? 
I'll  know  somehow — trust  me  ! ' 

She  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of  the  bed,  her  arms  behind  her, 
supporting  her,  her  little  feet  beating  each  other  restlessly — a  hot, 
vindictive  anger  speaking  from  every  feature,  every  movement. 
The  pretty  chit  of  seventeen  seemed  to  have  disappeared.  Here 
was  every  promise  of  a  wilful  and  obstinate  woman,  with  more  of 
her  father's  stuff  in  her  than  anyone  could  have  yet  surmised. 

A  pang  rose  in  Dora.  She  rose  impulsively,  and  throwing 
herself  down  by  Lucy,  drew  the  ruffled,  palpitating  creature  into 
her  arms. 

'  Oh,  Lucy,  isn't  it  only  because  you're  angry  and  vexed,  and 
because  you  want  to  fight  Uncle  Purcell  ?  Oh,  don't  go  on  just 
for  that !  When  we're — we're  Christians,  we  mustn't  want  our 
own  way — we  must  give  it  up — we  must  give  it  up. '  Her  voice 
sank  in  a  burst  of  tears,  and  she  drooped  her  head  on  Lucy's, 
kissing  her  cousin's  brown  hair. 

Lucy  extricated  herself  with  a  movement  of  impatience. 

'  When  one  loves  anybody,'  she  said,  sitting  very  upright  and 
twisting  her  fingers  together,  '  one  must  stick  to  him  ! ' 

Dora  started  at  the  word  '  love. '  It  seemed  to  her  a  profa- 
nation. She  dried  her  eyes,  and  got  up  to  go  without  another 
word. 

'  Well,  Dora,'  said  Lucy,  frowning,  '  and  so  you'll  do  nothing 
for  me — nothing  ? ' 

Dora  stood  a  moment  in  a  troubled  silence.  Then  she  turned, 
and  took  gentle  hold  of  her  cousin. 

'  If  I  get  a  chance,  Lucy,  I'll  try  and  find  out  whether  he's 
thinking  of  marrying  at  all.  And  if  he  isn't — and  I'm  sure  he 
isn't — will  you  give  it  all  up,  and  try  and  live  comfortable  with 
Uncle  Purcell,  and  think  of  something  else  ? ' 

Her  eyes  had  a  tender,  nay  a  passionate  entreaty  in  them. 

'  No  ! '  said  Lucy  with  energy  ;  '  but  I'll  very  likely  drown 
myself  in  the  river  some  fine  night.' 


180  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

Dora  still  held  her,  standing  above  her,  and  looking  down  at 
her,  trying  hard  to  read  her  true  mind.  Lucy  bore  it  defiantly 
for  a  minute ;  then  suddenly  two  large  tears  rose.  A  quiver 
passed  over  Dora's  face  ;  she  kissed  her  cousin  quickly,  and  went 
towards  the  door. 

'  And  I'll  find  out  what  father's  going  to  do,  or  my  name  isn't 
what  it  is  ! '  said  the  girl  behind  her,  in  a  shrill,  shaking  voice,  as 
she  closed  the  door. 

Dora  ran  back  to  Market  Place,  filled  with  a  presentiment 
that  she  was  late,  though  the  hand  of  the  Cathedral  clock  was 
still  far  from  three. 

At  the  side  door  stood  a  woman  with  a  shawl  over  her  head, 
looking  distractedly  up  the  street. 

'  Oh,  Miss  Dora  !  Miss  Dora  !  they've  sent.  He's  gooin — 
gooin  quick.  An'  he  keeps  wearyin'  for  "  mither  an'  Miss  Dora."  ' 

The  powerful  scarred  face  had  the  tremulous  helplessness  of 
grief.  Dora  took  her  by  the  arm. 

'  Let  us  run,  Sarah — at  once.     Oh,  never  mind  the  work  ! ' 

The  two  women  hurried  through  the  crowded  Saturday  streets. 
But  halfway  up  Market  Street  Sarah  stopped  short,  looking  round 
her  in  an  agony. 

'  Theer's  his  feyther,  Miss  Dora.  Oh,  he  wor  a  bad  'un  to  me, 
but  he  had  allus  a  soft  spot  for  t'  lad.  I'd  be  reet  glad  to  send 
worrud.  He  wor  theer  in  the  ward,  they  tell't  me,  last  week.' 

Three  years  before  she  had  separated  from  her  husband,  a 
sawyer,  by  mutual  consent.  He  was  younger  than  she,  and  he 
had  been  grossly  unfaithful  to  her  ;  she  came  of  a  good  country 
stock  and  her  daleswoman's  self-respect  could  put  up  with  him  no 
longer.  But  she  had  once  been  passionately  in  love  with  him, 
and,  as  she  said,  he  had  been  on  the  whole  kind  to  the  boy. 

'  "Where  is  he  ? '  said  Dora. 

'  At  Mr.  Whitelaw's  yard,  Edgell  Street,  Great  Ancoats.' 

They  had  just  entered  the  broad  Infirmary  Square.  Dora, 
looking  round  her  in  perplexity,  suddenly  saw  coming  towards 
them  the  tall  figure  of  David  Grieve.  The  leap  of  the  heart  of 
which  she  was  conscious  through  all  her  preoccupation  startled 
her.  But  she  went  up  to  him  without  a  moment's  hesitation. 
David,  swinging  along  as  though  Manchester  belonged  to  him, 
found  himself  arrested  and,  looking  down,  saw  Dora's  pale  and 
agitated  face. 

'  Mr.  Grieve,  will  you  help  me  ? ' 

She  drew  him  to  the  side  and  explained  as  quickly  as  she  could. 
Sarah  stood  by,  and  threw  in  directions. 

'  He'll  be  to  be  found  at  Mr.  Whitelaw's  yard — Edgell  Street — 
an'  whoever  goos  mun  just  say  to  him,  "  Sarah  says  to  tha — Wilt 
tha  coom,  or  wilt  tha  not  coom  ? — t'  lad's  deein. "  ' 

She  threw  out  the  words  with  a  sombre  simplicity  and  force, 
then,  her  whole  frame  quivering  with  impatience,  she  crossed  the 
road  to  the  Infirmary  without  waiting  for  Dora. 


CHAP,  v  YOUTH  181 

'  Can  you  send  some  one  ? '  said  Dora. 

'  I  will  go  myself  at  once.  I'll  find  the  man  if  he's  there,  and 
bring  him.  You  leave  it  to  me.' 

He  turned  without  more  ado,  broke  into  a  run,  and  disappeared 
round  the  corner  of  Oldham  Street. 

Dora  crossed  to  the  Infirmary,  her  mind  strangely  divided  for 
a  moment  between  the  solemn  image  of  what  was  coming,  and  the 
vibrating  memory  of  something  just  past. 

But,  once  in  the  great  ward,  pity  and  death  possessed  her 
wholly.  He  knew  them,  the  poor  lad — made,  as  it  seemed,  two 
tremulous  movements, — once,  when  his  mother's  uncontrollable 
crying  passed  into  his  failing  ear — once  when  Dora's  kiss  was  laid 
upon  his  hollow  temple.  Then  again  he  lay  unconscious,  drawing 
gently  to  the  end. 

Dora  knelt  beside  him  praying,  his  mother  on  the  other  side, 
and  the  time  passed.  Then  there  were  sounds  about  the  bed,  and 
looking  up,  Dora  saw  two  figures  approaching.  In  front  was  a 
middle-aged  man,  with  a  stupid,  drink-stained  face.  He  came 
awkwardly  and  unsteadily  up  to  the  bedside,  almost  stumbling 
over  his  wife,  and  laying  his  hand  on  the  back  of  a  chair  to 
support  himself.  He  brought  with  him  an  overpowering  smell  of 
beer,  and  Dora  thought  as  she  looked  at  him  that  he  had  only  a 
very  vague  idea  of  what  was  going  on.  His  wife  took  no  notice 
of  him  whatever. 

Behind  at  some  little  distance,  his  hat  in  his  hand,  stood  David 
Grieve.  Why  did  he  stay  ?  Dora  could  not  get  him  out  of  her 
\nind.  Even  in  her  praying  she  still  saw  the  dark,  handsome 
oead  and  lithe  figure  thrown  out  against  the  whiteness  of  the 
hospital  walls. 

There  was  a  slight  movement  in  the  bed,  and  the  nurse, 
standing  beside  the  boy,  looked  up  and  made  a  quick  sign  to  the 
mother.  What  she  and  Dora  saw  was  only  a  gesture  as  of  one 
settling  for  sleep.  Without  struggle  and  without  fear,  the  little 
lad  who  had  never  lived  enough  to  know  the  cost  of  dying,  went 
the  way  of  all  flesh. 

'  They  die  so  easily,  this  sort,'  said  the  nurse  to  Dora,  as  she 
tenderly  closed  the  patient  eyes ;  '  it's  like  a  plant  that's  never 
rooted. ' 

A  few  minutes  later  Dora  was  blindly  descending  the  long 
stairs.  The  mother  was  still  beside  her  dead,  making  arrange- 
ments for  the  burial.  The  father,  sobered  and  conscious,  had 
already  slouched  away.  But  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  Dora, 
looking  round,  saw  that  David  was  just  behind  her. 

He  came  out  with  her. 

'He  was  drunk  when  I  found  him,'  he  explained,  'he  had 
been  drinking  in  the  dinner  hour.  I  had  him  by  the  arm  all  the 
way,  and  thought  I  had  best  bring  him  straight  in.  And  then — 
I  had  never  seen  anyone  die,'  he  said  simply,  a  curious  light  in 
his  black  eyes. 


182  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  n 

Dora,  still  choked  with  tears,  could  not  speak.  With  shaking 
hands  she  searched  for  a  bit  of  veil  she  had  with  her  to  hide  her 
eyes  and  cheeks.  But  she  could  not  find  it. 

'Don't  go  down  Market  Street,'  he  said,  after  a  shy  look  at 
her.  '  Come  this  way,  there  isn't  such  a  crowd.' 

And  turning  down  Mosley  Street,  all  the  way  he  guided  her 
through  some  side  streets  where  there  were  fewer  people  to  stare. 
Such  forethought,  such  gentleness  in  him  were  quite  new  to  her. 
She  gradually  recovered  herself,  feeling  all  the  while  this  young 
sympathetic  presence  at  her  side — dreading  lest  it  should  desert 
her. 

He  meanwhile  was  still  under  the  tremor  and  awe  of  the  new 
experience.  So  this  was  dying  !  He  remembered  'Lias  holding 
Margaret's  hand.  '  Deein  's  long — but  ifs  varra,  varra  peaceful.' 
Not  always,  surely  !  There  must  be  vigorous,  tenacious  souls  that 
went  out  with  tempests  and  agonies  ;  and  he  was  conscious  of  a 
pang  of  fear,  feeling  himself  so  young  and  strong. 

Presently  he  led  her  into  St.  Ann's  Square,  and  then  they 
shook  hands.  He  hurried  off  to  his  business,  and  she  remained 
standing  a  moment  on  the  pavement  outside  the  church  which 
makes  one  side  of  the  square.  An  impulse  seized  her — she  turned 
and  went  into  the  church  instead  of  going  home. 

There,  in  one  of  the  old  oak  pews  where  the  little  tarnished 
plates  still  set  forth  the  names  of  their  eighteenth-century 
owners,  she  fell  on  her  knees  and  wrestled  with  herself  and  God. 

She  was  very  simple,  very  ignorant,  but  religion,  as  religion 
can,  had  dignified  and  refined  all  the  elements  of  character.  She 
said  to  herself  in  an  agony — that  he  must  love  her — that  she  had 
loved  him  in  truth  all  along.  And  then  a  great  remorse  came 
upon  her — the  spiritual  glory  she  had  just  passed  through  closed 
round  her  again.  What !  she  could  see  the  heaven  opened— the 
Good  Shepherd  stoop  to  take  his  own — and  then  come  away  to 
feel  nothing  but  this  selfish,  passionate  craving?  Oh,  she  was 
ashamed,  she  loathed  herself  ! 

Lucy  ! — Lucy  had  no  claim  !  should  have  no  claim !  He  did 
not  care  for  her. 

Then  again  the  pale  dead  face  would  flash  upon  her  with  its 
submissive  look, — so  much  gratitude  for  so  little,  and  such  a 
tender  ease  in  dying  !  And  she  possessed  by  all  these  bad  and 
jealous  feelings,  these  angry  desires,  fresh  from  such  a  presence  ! 

4  Oh  !  Lamb  of  God — Lamb  of&od — that  takest  away  the  sins 
of  the  world  ! ' 


CHAPTER  VI 

AND  David,  meanwhile,  was  thinking  of  nothing  in  the  world  but 
the  fortunes  of  a  little  shop,  about  twelve  feet  square,  and  of  the 
stall  outside  that  shop.  The  situation — for  a  hero — is  certainly 
one  of  the  flattest  conceivable.  Nevertheless  it  has  to  be  faced. 


CHAP,  vi  YOUTH  183 

If,  however,  one  were  to  say  that  he  had  marked  none  of  Lucy 
Pur-cell's  advances,  that  would  be  to  deny  him  eyes  as  well  as 
susceptibilities.  He  had,  indeed,  said  to  himself  in  a  lordly  way 
that  Lucy  Purcell  was  a  regular  little  flirt,  and  was  beginning 
those  ways  early.  But  a  certain  rough  young  modesty,  joined 
with  a  sense  of  humour  at  his  own  expense,  prevented  him  from 
making  any  more  of  it,  and  he  was  no  sooner  in  his  own  den 
watching  for  customers  than  Lucy  vanished  from  his  mind  alto- 
gether. He  thought  much  more  of  Purcell  himself,  with  much 
vengeful  chuckling  and  speculation. 

As  for  Dora,  he  had  certainly  begun  to  regard  her  as  a  friend. 
She  had  sense  and  experience,  in  spite  of  her  Ritualism,  whereas 
Lucy  in  his  eyes  had  neither.  So  that  to  run  into  the  Parlour, 
after  each  new  day  was  over,  and  discuss  with  Daddy  and  her  the 
ups  and  downs,  the  fresh  chances  and  prospects  of  his  infant 
business,  was  pleasant  enough.  Daddy  and  he  met  on  the  com- 
mon ground  of  wishing  to  make  the  world  uncomfortable  for 
Purcell  ;  while  Dora  supplied  the  admiring  uncritical  wonder,  in 
which,  like  a  warm  environment,  an  eager  temperament  expands, 
and  feels  itself  under  the  stimulus  more  inventive  and  mere 
capable  than  before. 

But  marrying !  The  lad's  careless  good-humoured  laugh 
under  Ancrum's  probings  was  evidence  enough  of  how  the  land 
lay.  Probably  at  the  bottom  of  him,  if  he  had  examined,  there 
lay  the  instinctive  assumption  that  Dora  was  one  of  the  girls  who 
are  not  likely  to  marry.  Men  want  them  for  sisters,  daughters, 
friends— and  then  go  and  fall  in  love  with  some  minx  that  has  a 
way  with  her. 

Besides,  who  could  be  bothered  with  '  gells,'  when  there  was 
a  stall  to  be  set  out  and  a  career  to  be  made  ?  With  that  stall, 
indeed,  David  was  truly  in  love.  How  he  fingered  and  meddled 
with  it ! — setting  out  the  cheap  reprints  it  contained  so  as  to 
show  their  frontispieces,  and  strewing  among  them,  in  an  artful 
disorder,  a  few  rare  local  pamphlets,  on  which  he  kept  a  careful 
watch,  either  from  the  door  or  from  inside.  Behind  these,  again, 
within  the  glass,  was  a  precious  shelf,  containing  in  the  middle 
of  it  about  a  dozen  volumes  of  a  kind  dear  to  a  collector's  eye — 
thin  volumes  in  shabby  boards,  then  just  beginning  to  be  sought 
after — the  first  editions  of  nineteenth-century  poets.  For  months 
past  David  had  been  hoarding  up  a  few  in  a  corner  of  his  little 
lodging,  and  on  his  opening  day  they  decoyed  him  in  at  least  five 
inquiring  souls,  all  of  whom  stayed  to  talk  a  bit.  There  was  a 
'  Queen  Mab,'  and  a  '  Lyrical  Ballads  ; '  an  '  Endymion  ; '  a  few 
Landors  thrown  in,  and  a  '  Bride  of  Abydos ' — this  last  not  of 
much  account,  for  its  author  had  the  indiscretion,  from  the  col- 
lector's point  of  view,  to  be  famous  from  the  beginning,  and  so  to 
flood  the  world  with  large  editions. 

Round  and  about  these  dainty  morsels  were  built  in  with  solid 
rubbish,  with  Daddy's  'Journals  of  Theology,1  'British  Contro- 
versialist,' and  the  rest.  In  one  top  corner  lurked  a  few  battered 


184  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

and  cut-down  Elzevirs,  of  no  value  save  to  the  sentiment  of  the 
window,  while  a  good  many  spaces  were  filled  up  with  some  new 
and  attractive  editions  of  standard  books  just  out  of  copyright, 
contributed,  these  last,  by  the  enterprising  traveller  of  a  popular 
firm,  from  whom  David  had  them  on  commission. 

Inside,  the  shop  was  of  the  roughest :  a  plank  or  two  on  a 
couple  of  trestles  served  for  a  counter,  and  two  deal  shelves,  put 
up  by  David,  ran  along  the  wall  behind.  The  counter  held  a  few 
French  scientific  books,  very  fresh,  and  'in  the  movement,'  the 
result  of  certain  inquiries  put  by  old  Barbier  to  a  school  friend  of 
his,  now  professor  at  the  Sorbonne — meant  to  catch  the  '  college 
people  ; '  while  on  the  other  side  lay  some  local  histories  of  neigh- 
bouring towns  and  districts,  a  sort  of  commodity  always  in 
demand  in  a  great  expanding  city,  where  new  men  have  risen 
rapidly  and  families  are  in  the  making.  For  these  local  books 
the  lad  had  developed  an  astonishing  flair.  He  had  the  geo- 
graphical and  also  the  social  instincts  which  the  pursuit  of  them 
demands. 

On  his  first  day  David  netted  in  all  a  profit  of  seventeen 
shillings  and  twopence,  and  at  night  he  curled  himself  up  on  a 
mattress  in  the  little  back  kitchen,  with  an  old  rug  for  covering 
and  a  bit  of  fire,  and  slept  the  sleep  of  liberty. 

In  a  few  days  more  several  of  the  old-established  book-buyers 
of  the  town,  a  more  numerous  body,  perhaps,  in  Manchester  than 
in  other  northern  centres,  had  found  him  out ;  a  certain  portly 
and  wealthy  lady,  connected  with  one  of  the  old  calico-printing 
families,  a  person  of  character,  who  made  a  hobby  of  Lancashire 
Nonconformity,  had  walked  into  the  shop,  and  given  the  boyish 
owner  of  it  much  good  advice  and  a  few  orders ;  the  Earl  of 
Driffield  had  looked  in,  and,  caught  by  the  lures  of  the  stall, 
customers  had  come  from  the  most  unlikely  quarters,  desiring 
the  most  heterogeneous  wares.  The  handsome,  intelligent  young 
fellow,  with  his  out-of-the-way  strains  of  knowledge,  with  his 
frank  self-conceit  and  his  equally  frank  ignorance,  caught  the 
fancy  of  those  who  stayed  to  talk  with  him.  A  certain  number 
of  persons  had  been  already  taken  with  him  in  Purcell's  shop,  and 
were  now  vastly  amused  by  the  lad's  daring  and  the  ambitious 
range  of  his  first  stock. 

As  for  Lord  Driffield,  on  the  first  occasion  when  he  had 
dropped  in  he  had  sat  for  an  hour  at  least,  talking  and  smoking 
cigarettes  across  David's  primitive  counter. 

This  remarkable  person,  of  whom  Lucy  thought  so  little,  was 
well  known,  and  had  been  well  known,  for  a  good  many  years, 
to  the  booksellers  of  Manchester  and  Liverpool.  As  soon  as  the 
autumn  shooting  season  began,  Purcell,  for  instance,  remembered 
Lord  Driffield,  and  began  to  put  certain  books  aside  for  him.  He 
possessed  one  of  the  famous  libraries  of  England,  and  he  not 
only  owned  but  read.  Scholars  all  over  Europe  took  toll  both  of 
his  books  and  his  brains.  He  lived  to  collect  and  to  be  consulted. 
There  was  almost  nothing  he  did  not  know,  except  how  to  make 


CHAP,  vi  YOUTH  185 

a  book  for  himself.  He  was  so  learned  that  he  had,  so  to  speak, 
worked  through  to  an  extreme  modesty.  His  friends,  however, 
found  nothing  in  life  so  misleading  as  Lord  Driffield's  diffidence. 

At  the*  same  time  Providence  had  laid  upon  him  a  vast  family 
estate,  and  an  aristocratic  wife,  married  in  his  extreme  youth  to 
please  his  father.  Lady  Driffield  had  the  ideas  of  her  caste,  and 
when  they  came  to  their  great  house  near  Stalybridge,  in  the 
autumn,  she  insisted  on  a  succession  of  proper  guests,  who  would 
shoot  the  grouse  in  a  proper  manner,  and  amuse  her  in  the 
evenings.  For,  as  she  had  no  children,  life  was  often  monoto- 
nous, and  when  she  was  bored  she  had  a  stately  way  of  making 
herself  disagreeable  to  Lord  Driffield.  He  therefore  did  his  best 
to  content  her.  He  received  her  guests,  dined  with  them  in  the 
evenings,  and  despatched  them  to  the  moors  in  the  morning. 
But  between  those  two  functions  he  was  his  own  master  ;  and  on 
the  sloppy  November  afternoons  he  might  as  often  as  not  be  seen 
trailing  about  Manchester  or  Liverpool,  carrying  his  slouching 
shoulders  and  fair  spectacled  face  into  every  bookseller's  shop, 
good,  bad,  and  indifferent,  or  giving  lectures,  mostly  of  a  geo- 
graphical kind,  at  popular  institutions — an  occupation  in  which 
he  was  not  particularly  effective. 

David  had  served  him,  once  or  twice,  in  Half  Street,  and  had 
sent  a  special  notice  of  his  start  and  his  intentions  to  Benet's 
Park,  the  Driffields'  '  place. '  Lord  Driffield's  first  visit  left  him 
quivering  with  excitement,  for  the  earl  had  a  way  of  behaving  as 
though  everybody  else  were  not  only  his  social,  but  his  intellectual 
equal — even  a  lad  of  twenty,  with  his  business  to  learn.  He 
would  sit  pleasantly  smoking  and  asking  questions — a  benevolent, 
shabby  person,  eager  to  be  informed.  Then,  when  David  had 
fallen  into  the  trap,  and  was  holding  forth — proud,  it  might  be, 
of  certain  bits  of  knowledge  which  no  one  else  in  Manchester 
possessed — Lord  Driffield  would  throw  in  a  gentle  comment,  and 
then  another  and  another,  till  the  trickle  became  .a  stream,  and 
the  young  man  would  fall  blankly  listening,  his  mouth  opening 
wider  and  wider.  When  it  was  over,  and  the  earl,  with  his 
draggled  umbrella,  had  disappeared,  David  sat,  crouched  on  his 
wooden  stool,  consumed  with  hot  ambition  and  wonder.  How 
could  a  man  know  so  much — and  an  earl,  who  didn't  want  it  ? 
For  a  few  hours,  at  any  rate,  his  self-conceit  was  dashed.  He 
realised  dimly  what  it  might  be  to  know  as  the  scholar  knows. 
And  that  night,  when  he  had  shut  the  shutters,  he  vowed  to  him- 
self, as  he  gathered  his  books  about  him,  that  five  hours  was 
enough  sleep  for  a  strong  man  ;  that  learn  he  must  and  should, 
and  that  some  day  or  other  he  would  hold  his  own,  even  with 
Lord  Driffield. 

How  he  loved  his  evenings — the  paraffin  lamp  glaring  beside 
him,  the  crackling  of  the  coal  in  his  own  fire,  the  book  on  his 
knee  !  Ancrum  had  kept  his  promise,  and  was  helping  him  with 
his  Greek  ;  but  his  teaching  hardly  kept  pace  with  the  boy's 
enthusiasm  and  capacity.  The  voracity  with  which  he  worked  at 


186  .        THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

his  Thucydides  and  Homer  left  the  lame  minister  staring  and 
sighing.  The  sound  of  the  lines,  the  roll  of  the  oi's  and  ou's  was 
in  David's  ear  all  day,  and  to  learn  a  dozen  irregular  verbs  in 
the  interval  between  two  customers  was  like  the  gulping  of  a 
dainty. 

Meanwhile,  as  he  collected  his  English  poets  he  read  them. 
And  here  was  a  whole  new  world.  For  in  his  occupation  with 
the  Encyclopaedists  he  had  cared  little  for  poetry.  The  reaction 
against  his  Methodist  fit  had  lasted  long,  had  developed  a  certain 
contempt  for  sentiment,  a  certain  love  for  all  sharp,  dry,  calcu- 
lable things,  and  for  the  tone  of  irony  in  particular.  But  in  such 
a  nature  such  a  phase  was  sure  to  pass,  and  it  was  passing. 
Burns,  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Tennyson — now  he  was  making 
acquaintance  piecemeal  with  them  all,  as  the  precious  volumes 
turned  up,  which  he  was  soon  able  to  place  with  a  precision  which 
tore  them  too  soon  out  of  his  hands.  The  Voltairean  temper  in 
him  was  melting,  was  passing  into  something  warmer,  subtler, 
and  more  restless. 

But  he  was  not  conscious  of  it.  He  was  as  secular,  as  cocksure, 
as  irritating  as  ever,  when  Ancrum  probed  him  on  the  subject  of 
the  Hall  of  Science  or  the  various  Secularist  publications  which  he 
supported. 

'  Do  you  call  yourself  an  atheist  now,  David  ? '  said  Ancrum 
one  day,  in  that  cheerful,  half-ironic  tone  which  the  young  book- 
seller resented. 

'I  don't  call  myself  anything,'  said  David,  stoutly.  'I'm  all 
for  this  world  ;  we  can't  know  anything  about  another.  At  least, 
that's  my  opinion,  sir — no  offence  to  you.' 

'  Oh,  dear  me,  no  offence  !  There  have  been  a  few  philoso- 
phers, you  know,  Davy,  since  Voltaire.  There's  a  person  called 
Kant ;  I  don't  know  anything  about  him,  but  they  tell  me  he 
made  out  a  very  pretty  case,  on  the  practical  side  anyway,  for 
a  God  and  immortality.  And  in  England,  too,  there  have  been 
two  or  three  persons  of  consequence,  you  remember,  like  Coleridge 
and  John  Henry  Newman,  who  have  thought  it  worth  while  to 
believe  a  little.  But  you  don't  care  about  that  ? ' 

The  lad  stood  silent  a  moment,  his  colour  rising,  his  fine  lip 
curling.  Then  he  burst  out : 

'  "What's  the  good  of  thinking  about  things  by  the  wrong  end  ? 
There's  such  a  lot  to  read  ! ' 

And  with  a  great  stretch  of  all  his  young  frame  he  fell  back 
on  the  catalogue  he  was  looking  through,  while  Ancrum  went  on 
turning  over  a  copy  of  '  The  Reasoner,'  a  vigorous  Secularist 
paper  of  the  day,  which  he  had  found  on  the  counter,  and  which 
had  suggested  his  question. 

Knowledge — success :  it  was  for  these  that  David  burned,  and 
he  laid  rapid  hands  upon  them.  He  had  a  splendid  physique, 
and  at  this  moment  of  his  youth  he  strained  it  to  the  utmost.  He 
grudged  the  time  for  sleep  and  meals,  and  on  Saturday  afternoons, 
the  early-closing  day  of  Manchester,  he  would  go  out  to  country 


CHAP,  vr  YOUTH  187 

sales,  or  lay  plans  for  seeing  the  few  considerable  libraries— Lord 
Driffield's  among  them — which  the  neighbouring  districts  pos- 
sessed. On  Sunday  he  read  from  morning  till  night,  and  once  or 
twice  his  assistant  John,  hammering  outside  for  admittance  in  the 
winter  dark,  wakened  the  master  of  the  shop  from  the  rickety 
chair  where  he  had  fallen  asleep  over  his  books  in  the  small  hours 
of  the  morning. 

His  assistant !  It  may  well  be  asked  what  a  youth  of  twenty, 
setting  up  on  thirty  pounds  capital  in  a  small  shop,  wanted  with 
an  assistant  before  he  had  any  business  to  speak  of.  The  story  is 
a  curious  one. 

Some  time  in  the  previous  summer  Daddy  had  opened  a 
smoking  and  debating  room  at  the  Parlour,  by  way  of  keeping  his 
clientele  together  and  giving  a  special  character  to  the  place.  He 
had  merely  boarded  off  a  bit  of  the  original  seed  warehouse,  put 
in  some  rough  tables  and  chairs,  and  a  few  newspapers.  But  by 
a  conjunction  of  circumstances  the  place  had  taken  a  Secularist 
character,  and  the  weekly  debates  which  Daddy  inaugurated 
were,  for  a  time  at  least,  well  attended.  Secularism,  like  all 
other  forms  of  mental  energy,  had  lately  been  active  in  Man- 
chester ;  there  had  been  public  discussions  between  Mr.  Holyoake 
and  Mr.  Bradlaugh  as  to  whether  Secularism  were  necessarily 
atheistic  or  no.  Some  of  the  old  newspapers  of  the  movement, 
dating  from  Chartist  days,  had  recently  taken  a  new  lease  of  life  ; 
and  combined  with  the  protest  against  theology  was  a  good  deal 
of  co-operative  and  republican  enthusiasm.  Lomax,  who  had 
been  a  Secularist  and  an  Owenite  for  twenty  years,  and  who  was 
a  republican  to  boot,  threw  himself  into  the  melee,  and  the 
Parlour  debates  during  the  whole  of  the  autumn  and  winter  of 
'69-70  were  full  of  life,  and  brought  out  a  good  many  young 
speakers,  David  Grieve  among  them.  Indeed,  David  was  for  a 
time  the  leader  of  the  place,  so  ready  was  his  gift,  so  confident 
and  effective  his  personality. 

On  one  occasion  in  October  he  was  holding  forth  on  '  Science 
— the  true  Providence  of  Life.'  The  place  was  crowded.  A  well- 
known  Independent  had  been  got  hold  of  to  answer  the  young 
Voltairean,  and  David  was  already  excited,  for  his  audience  was 
plying  him  with  interruptions,  and  taxing  to  the  utmost  a  natural 
debating  power. 

In  the  midst  of  it  a  printer's  devil  from  the  restaurant  outside, 
a  stout,  stupid-looking  lad,  found  his  way  in,  and  stood  at  the 
door  listening.  The  fine  classical  head  of  the  speaker,  the 
beautiful  voice,  the  gestures  so  free  and  flowing,  the  fire  and 
fervour  of  the  whole  performance — these  things  left  him  gaping. 

'  Who's  that  ? '  he  ventured  to  inquire  of  a  man  near  him,  a 
calico  salesman,  well  known  in  the  Salford  Conservative  Associa- 
tion, who  had  come  to  support  the  Independent  speaker. 

The  man  laughed. 

1  Tuat's  young  Grieve,  assistant  to  old  Purcell,  Half  Street. 
/le  talks  a  d d  lot  of  stuff — blasphemous  stuff,  too  ;  but  if 


188  THE  HISTORY  OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

somebody  'd  take  and  teach  him  and  send  him  into  Parliament, 
some  day  he'd  make  'em  skip,  I  warrant  yo.  I  neve'r  heard 
onybody  frame  better  for  public  speaking,  and  I've  heard  a 
lot.' 

The  printer's  devil  stayed  and  stared  through  the  debate. 
Then,  afterwards,  he  began  to  haunt  the  paths  of  this  young 
Satan,  crept  up  to  him  in  the  news-room,  skulked  about  him  in 
the  restaurant.  At  last  David  took  notice  of  him,  and  they  made 
friends. 

'  Have  you  got  anybody  belonging  to  you  ? '  he  asked  him, 
shortly. 

'No,'  said  the  boy.  'Father  died  last  spring;  mother  was 
took  with  pleurisy  in  November — ' 

But  the  words  stuck  in  his  throat,  and  he  coughed  ovei  them. 

'  All  right,'  said  David  ;  '  come  for  a  walk  Sunday  afternoon  ? ' 

So  a  pretty  constant  companionship  sprang  up  between  them. 
John  Dalby  came  of  a  decent  stock,  and  was  still,  as  it  were, 
under  the  painful  and  stupefying  surprise  of  those  bereavements 
which  had  left  him  an  orphan.  His  blue  eyes  looked  bewilder- 
ment at  the  world  ;  he  was  bullied  by  the  compositors  he  worked 
under.  Sometimes  he  had  violent  fits  of  animal  spirits,  but  in 
general  he  was  dull  and  silent,  and  no  one  could  have  guessed 
that  he  often  read  poetry  and  cried  himself  to  sleep  in  the  garret 
where  he  lodged.  Physically  he  was  a  great,  overgrown  creature, 
not,  in  truth,  much  younger  than  David.  But  while  David  was 
already  the  man,  John  was  altogether  in  the  tadpole-stage — a 
being  of  large,  ungainly  frame,  at  war  with  his  own  hands  and 
feet,  his  small  eyes  lost  in  his  pink,  spreading  cheeks,  his  speech 
shy  and  scanty.  Yet,  such  as  he  was,  David  found  a  use  for 
him.  Temperaments  of  the  fermenting,  expansive  sort  want  a 
listener  at  the  moment  of  early  maturity,  and  almost  any  two- 
legged  thing  with  the  listener's  gift  will  do.  David  worked  off 
much  steam  on  the  Saturday  or  Sunday  afternoons,  when  the  two 
would  push  out  into  the  country,  walking  some  twenty  miles  or 
so  for  the  sheer  joy  of  movement.  While  the  one  talked  and  de- 
claimed, ploughing  his  violent  way  through  the  soil  of  his  young 
thought,  the  other,  fat  and  silent,  puffed  alongside,  and  each  in 
his  own  way  was  happy. 

Just  about  the  time  David  was  dismissed  by  Purcell,  John's 
apprenticeship  came  to  an  end.  When  he  heard  of  the  renting 
of  the  shop  in  Potter  Street,  he  promptly  demanded  to  come  as 
assistant. 

'  Don't  be  a  fool  ! '  said  David,  turning  upon  him ;  '  what 
should  I  want  with  an  assistant  in  that  bit  of  a  place  ?  And  I 
couldn't  pay  you,  besides,  man.' 

'  Don't  mind  that,'  said  John,  stoutly.  '  I'd  like  to  learn  the 
trade.  Perhaps  you'll  set  up  a  printing  business  by-and-by. 
Lots  of  booksellers  do.  Then  I'll  be  handy.' 

'  And  how  the  deuce  are  you  going  to  live  ? '  cried  David,  some- 
what exasperated  by  these  unpractical  proposals.  '  You're  not 


CHAP.  VI  YOUTH  189 

exactly  a  grasshopper ; '  and  his  eye,  half  angry,  half  laughing, 
ran  over  John's  plump  person. 

To  which  John  replied,  undisturbed,  that  he  had  got  four 
pounds  still  of  the  little  hoard  his  mother  had  left  him,  and, 
judging  by  what  David  had  told  him  of  his  first  months  in  Man- 
chester, he  could  make  that  last '-for  living  a  good  while.  When 
he  had  learnt  something  of  the  business  with  David,  he  would 
move  on — trust  him. 

Whereupon  David  told  him  flatly  that  he  wasn't  going  to  help 
him  waste  his  money,  and  sent  him  about  his  business. 

On  the  very  day,  however,  that  David  opened,  he  was  busy  in 
the  shop,  when  he  saw  John  outside  at  the  stall,  groaning  under 
a,  bundle. 

'It's  Mr.  Lomax  ha  sent  you  this,'  said  the  lad,  calmly,  'and 
I'm  to  put  it  up,  and  tell  him  how  your  stock  looks.' 

The  bundle  contained  Daddy's  contributions  to  young  Grieve's 
window,  which  at  the  moment  were  very  welcome  ;  and  David  in 
his  gratitude  instructed  the  messenger  to  take  back  a  cordial 
message.  The  only  notice  John  took  was  to  lift  up  two  deal 
shelves  that  were  leaning  against  the  wall  of  the  shop,  and  to  ask 
where  they  were  to  go. 

And,  say  what  David  would,  he  stuck,  and  would  not  be  got 
rid  of.  With  the  Lancashire  accent  he  had  also  the  Lancashire 
persistence,  and  David  after  a  while  gave  in,  consented  that  he 
should  stay  for  some  weeks,  at  any  rate,  and  then  set  to  work  to 
teach  him,  in  a  very  impatient  and  intermittent  way.  For 
watching  and  bargaining  at  the  stall,  at  any  rate,  for  fetching  and 
carrying,  and  for  all  that  appertains  to  the  carrying  and  packing 
of  parcels,  John  presently  developed  a  surprising  energy.  David's 
wits  were  thereby  freed  for  the  higher  matters  of  his  trade,  while 
John  was  beast  of  burden.  The  young  master  could  work  up  his 
catalogues,  study  his  famous  collections,  make  his  own  biblio- 
graphical notes,  or  run  off  here  and  there  by  'bus  or  train  in  quest 
of  books  for  a  customer ;  he  could  swallow  down  his  Greek 
verbs  or  puzzle  out  his  French  for  Barbier  in  the  intervals  of 
business ;  the  humbler  matters  of  the  shop  prospered  none  the 
less. 

Meanwhile  both  lads  were  vegetarians  and  teetotalers ;  both 
lived  as  near  as  might  be  on  sixpence  a  day  ;  and  an  increasing 
portion  of  the  Manchester  world — of  that  world,  at  any  rate, 
which  buys  books — began,  as  the  weeks  rolled  on,  to  take  interest 
in  the  pair  and  their  venture. 

Christmas  came,  and  David  made  up  his  accounts.  He  had 
turned  over  the  whole  of  his  capital  in  six  weeks,  had  lived  and 
paid  his  rent,  and  was  very  nearly  ten  pounds  to  the  good.  On 
the  evening  when  he  made  this  out  he  sat  jubilantly  over  the  fire, 
thinking  of  Louie.  Certainly  it  would  be  soon  time  for  him  to 
send  for  Louie  at  this  rate.  Yet  there  were  pros  and  cons.  He 
would  have  to  look  after  her  when  she  did  come,  and  there  would 
be  an  end  of  his  first  freedom.  And  what  would  she  find  to  do  ? 


190  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

Silk-weaving  had  been  decaying  year  by  year  in  Manchester,  and 
for  hand-loom  weaving,  at  any  rate,  there  was  no  opening  at 
all. 

No  matter  !  With  his  prosperity  there  came  a  quickening  of 
the  sense  of  kinship,  which  would  not  let  him  rest.  For  the  first 
time  for  many  years  he  thought  often  of  his  father.  Who  and 
what  had  his  mother  been  ?  Why  had  Uncle  Reuben  never  spoken 
of  his  parents,  save  that  one  tormented  word  in  the  dark  ?  Why, 
his  father  could  not  have  been  thirty  when  he  died  !  Some  day 
he  would  make  Uncle  Reuben  tell  all  the  story — he  would  know, 
too,  where  his  father  was  buried. 

And  meanwhile,  in  a  few  more  weeks,  he  would  write  to 
Kinder.  He  would  be  good  to  Louie — he  decidedly  meant  that 
she  should  have  a  good  time.  Perhaps  she  had  grown  out  t>f  her 
tricks  by  now.  Tom  said  she  was  thought  to  be  uncommon 
handsome.  David  made  a  little  face  'as  he  remembered  that. 
She  would  be  all  the  more  difficult  to  manage. 

Yet  all  the  time  David  Grieve's  prosperity  was  the  most 
insecure  growth  imaginable. 

One  evening  Lucy  rushed  in  late  to  see  Dora. 

'  Oh,  Dora  !  Dora  !  Put  down  your  work  at  once  and  listen 
to  me.' 

Dora  looked  up  in  amazement,  to  see  Lucy's  little  face  all 
crimson  with  excitement  and  resolution. 

'  Dora,  I've  found  it  all  out :  he's  going  to  buy  the  house  over 
Mr.  Grieve's  head,  and  turn  him  into  the  street,  just  as  he's  got 
nicely  settled.  Oh  !  he's  done  it  before,  I  can  tell  you.  There 
was  a  man  higher  up  Half  Street  he  served  just  the  same.  He's 
got  the  money,  and  he's  got  the  spite.  Well  now,  Dora,  it's  no 
good  staring.  Has  Mr.  Grieve  been  up  here  lately  ? ' 

'No;  not  lately,'  said  Dora,  with  an  involuntary  sigh. 
'  Father's  been  to  see  him.  He  says  he's  that  busy  he  can't  come 
out.  But,  Lucy,  how  do  you  know  all  this  ? ' 

Whereupon,  at  first,  Lucy  wouldn't  tell ;  but  being  at  bottom 
intensely  proud  of  her  own  cleverness  at  last  confessed.  She  had 
been  for  long  convinced  that  her  father  meant  mischief  to  young 
Grieve,  and  had  been  on  the  wateh.  A  little  listening  at  doors 
here,  and  a  little  prying  into  papers  there,  had  presently  given 
her  the  clue.  In  a  private  drawer,  unlocked  by  chance,  she  had 
found  a  solicitor's  letter  containing  the  full  description  of  No.  15 
Potter  Street,  and  of  some  other  old  houses  in  the  same  street, 
soon  to  be  sold  and  rebuilt.  The  description  contained  notes  of 
price  and  date  in  her  father's  hand.  That  very  evening  the 
solicitor  in  question  had  come  to  see  her  father.  She  had  been 
sent  upstairs,  but  had  managed  to  listen  all  the  same.  The 
purchase — whatever  it  was — was  to  be  concluded  '  shortly.' 
There  had  been  much  legal  talk,  and  her  father  had  seemed  in  a 
particularly  good  temper  when  Mr.  Vance  went  away. 

'  Well  now,  look  here,'  said  Lucy,  frowning  and  biting  her  lips ; 


CHAP,  vi  YOUTH  191 

'  I  shall  just  go  right  on  and  see  him.    I  thought  I  might  have 
found  him  here.     But  there's  no  time  to  lose.' 

Dora  had  bent  over  her  frame  again,  and  her  face  was 
hidden. 

'  Why,  it's  quite  late,'  she  said,  slowly  ;  '  the  shop  will  be  shut 
up  long  ago. ' 

'  I  don't  care — I  don't  care  a  bit,'  cried  Lucy.  '  One  can't 
think  about  what's  proper.  I'm  just  going  straight  away.' 

And  she  got  up  feverishly,  and  put  on  her  hat  again. 

'  Why  can't  you  tell  father  and  send  him  ?  He's  downstairs  in 
the  reading-room,'  said  Dora. 

'  I'll  go  myself,  Dora,  thank  you,'  said  Lucy,  with  an  obstinate 
toss  of  her  head,  as  she  stood  before  the  old  mirror  over  the 
mantelpiece.  '  I  dare  say  you  think  I'm  a  very  bold  girl.  It 
don't  matter.' 

Then  for  a  minute  she  became  absorbed  in  putting  one  side  of 
her  hair  straight.  Dora,  from  behind,  sat  looking  at  her,  needle 
in  hand.  The  gaslight  fell  on  her  pale,  disturbed  face,  showed 
for  an  instant  a  sort  of  convulsion  pass  across  it  which  Lucy  did 
not  see.  Then  she  drew  her  hand  along  her  eyes,  with  a  low, 
quivering  breath,  and  went  back  to  her  work. 

As  Lucy  opened  the  door,  however,  a  movement  of  anxiety,  of 
conscience,  rose  in  Dora. 

'  Lucy,  shall  I  go  with  you  ? ' 

'  Oh,  no,'  said  Lucy,  impatiently.  '  I  know  what's  what,  thank 
you,  Dora.  I'll  take  care  of  myself.  Perhaps  I'll  come  back  and 
tell  you  what  he  says.' 

And  she  closed  the  door  behind  her.  Dora  did  not  move  from 
her  work  ;  but  her  hand  trembled  so  that  she  made  several  false 
stitches  and  had  to  undo  them. 

Meanwhile  Lucy  sped  along  across  Market  Street  and  through 
St.  Ann's  Square.  Her  blood  was  up,  and  she  could  hsve  done 
anything,  braved  anybody,  to  defeat  her  father  and  win  a  smile 
from  David  Grieve.  Yet,  as  she  entered  Potter  Street,  she  began 
to  quake  a  little.  The  street  was  narrow  and  dark.  On  one  side 
the  older  houses  had  been  long  ago  pulled  down  and  replaced  by 
tall  warehouses,  which  at  night  were  a  black  and  towering  mass, 
without  a  light  anywhere.  The  few  shops  opposite  closed  early, 
for  in  the  office  quarter  of  Manchester  there  is  very  little  doing 
after  office  hours,  when  the  tide  of  life  ebbs  outwards. 

Lucy  looked  for  No.  15,  her  heart  beating  fast.  There  was  a 
light  in  the  first  floor,  but  the  shop-front  was  altogether  dark. 
She  crossed  the  street,  and,  lifting  a  shaking  hand,  rang  the  bell 
of  the  very  narrow  side  door. 

Instantly  there  were  sounds  inside — a  step — and  David  stood 
on  the  threshold. 

He  stared  in  amazement  at  his  unwonted  visitor. 

'  Oh,  Mr.  Grieve — please — I've  got  something  to  tell  you.  Oh, 
no,  I  won't  come  in — we  can  stand  here,  please,  out  of  the  wind. 
But  father's  going  to  buy  this  place  over  your  head,  and  I  thought 


192  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  u 

I'd  better  come  and  tell  you.  He'll  be  pretty  mad  if  he  thinks 
I've  let  out ;  but  I  don't  care.' 

She  was  leaning  against  the  wall  of  the  passage,  and  David 
could  just  see  the  defiance  and  agitation  on  her  face  by  the  light 
of  the  gas-lamp  outside. 

He  himself  gave  a  low  whistle. 

'  Well,  that's  rather  strong,  isn't  it,  Miss  Purcell  ? ' 

'  It's  mean — it's  abominable, '  she  cried.  '  I  vowed  I'd  stop  it. 
But  I  don't  know  what  he'll  do  to  me — kill  me,  most  likely. ' 

'Nobody  shall  do  anything  to  you,'  said  David,  decidedly. 
'  You're  a  brick.  But  look  here — can  you  tell  me  anything 
more  ? ' 

She  commanded  herself  with  great  difficulty,  and  told  all  she 
knew.  David  leant  against  the  wall  beside  her,  twisting  a  medi- 
tative lip.  The  situation  was  ominous,  certainly.  He  had  always 
known  that  his  tenure  was  precarious,  but  from  various  indica- 
tions he  had  supposed  that  it  would  be  some  years  yet  before  his 
side  of  the  street  was  much  meddled  with.  That  old  fox  !  He 
must  go  and  see  Mr.  Ancrum. 

A  passion  of  hate  and  energy  rose  within  him.  Somehow  or 
other  he  would  pull  through. 

When  Lucy  had  finished  the  tale  of  her  eavesdroppings,  the 
young  fellow  shook  himself  and  stood  erect. 

'  Well,  I  am  obliged  to  you,  Miss  Purcell.  And  now  I'll  just 
go  straight  off  and  talk  to  somebody  that  I  think  '11  help  me.  But 
I'll  see  you  to  Market  Street  first.' 

'  Oh  ! — somebody  will  see  us  ! '  she  cried  in  a  fever,  '  and  tell 
father.' 

'  Not  they  ;  I'll  keep  a  look  out.' 

Then  suddenly,  as  they  walked  along  together,  a  great  shyness 
fell  upon  them  both.  Why  had  she  done  this  thing,  and  run  the 
risk  of  her  father's  wrath  ?  As  David  walked  beside  her,  he  felt 
for  an  instant,  through  all  his  gratitude,  as  though  some  one  had 
thrown  a  lasso  round  him,  and  the  cord  were  tightening.  He 
could  not  have  explained  the  feeling,  but  it  made  him  curt  and 
restive,  absorbed,  apparently,  in  his  own  thoughts.  Meanwhile 
Lucy's  heart  swelled  and  swelled.  She  did  think  he  would  have 
taken  her  news  differently — have  made  more  of  it  and  her.  She 
wished  she  had  never  come — she  wished  she  had  brought  Dora. 
The  familiar  consciousness  of  failure,  of  insignificance,  returned, 
and  the  hot  tears  rose  in  her  eyes. 

At  Market  Street  she  stopped  him  hurriedly. 

'  Don't  come  any  farther.     I  can  get  home. ' 

David,  meanwhile,  was  saying  to  himself  that  he  was  a  churl- 
ish brute  ;  but  for  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  get  out  any  pretty 
speeches  worthy  of  the  occasion. 

'  I'm  sure  I  take  it  most  kind  of  you,  Miss  Purcell.  There's 
nothing  could  have  saved  me  if  you  hadn't  told.  And  I  don't 
know  whether  I  can  get  out  of  it  now.  But  if  ever  I  can  do  any- 
thing for  you,  you  know — ' 


CHAP,  vn  YOUTH  193 

'  Oh,  never  mind  ! — never  mind  I '  she  said,  incoherently, 
stabbed  by  his  constraint.  '  Good  night. ' 

And  she  ran  away  into  the  darkness,  choked  by  the  sorest 
tears  she  had  ever  shed. 

David,  meanwhile,  went  on  his  way  to  Ancrum,  scourging 
himself.  If  ever  there  was  an  ungrateful  cur,  it  was  he  !  Why 
could  he  find  nothing  nice  to  say  to  that  girl  in  return  for  all  her 
pluck?  Of  course  she  would  get  into  trouble.  Coming  to  see 
him  at  that  time  of  night,  too  1  Why,  it  was  splendid  ! 

Yet,  all  the  same,  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  if  she  had  been 
there  beside  him  again,  he  would  have  been  just  as  tongue-tied  as 
before. 


-CHAPTER  VII 

ON  the  following  night  David  walked  into  the  Parlour  about  eight 
o'clock,  hung  up  his  hat  with  the  air  of  an  emperor,  and  looked 
round  for  Daddy. 

'  Look  here,  Daddy !  I've  got  something  to  say  to  you,  but 
not  down  here  :  you'll  be  letting  out  my  private  affairs,  and  I 
can't  stand  that.' 

'  Well,  come  upstairs,  then,  you  varmint !  You're  a  poor  sort 
of  fellow,  always  suspecting  your  friends.  Come  up — come  up 
with  you  !  I'll  humour  you  ! ' 

And  Daddy,  bursting  with  curiosity,  led  the  way  upstairs  to 
Dora's  sitting-room.  Dora  was  moving  about  amid  a  mass  of 
silks,  which  lay  carefully  spread  out  on  the  table,  shade  melting 
into  shade,  awaiting  their  transference  to  a  new  silk  case  she  had 
been  busy  upon. 

As  the  door  opened  she  look  up,  and  when  she  saw  David  her 
face  flushed  all  over. 

Daddy  pushed  the  lad  in. 

'  Dora,  he's  got  some  news.     Out  with  it,  sir  ! ' 

And  he  stood  opposite  the  young  fellow,  on  tiptoe,  quivering 
with  impatience. 

David  put  both  hasids  in  his  pockets,  and  looked  out  upon 
them,  radiant. 

'  I  think,'  he  said  slowly,  '  I've  scotched  old  Purcell  this  time. 
But  perhaps  you  don't  know  what  he's  been  after  ? ' 

'  Lucy  was  in  here  last  night, '  said  Dora,  hesitating  ;  '  she 
told  me  about  it.' 

'  Lucy  ! '  cried  Daddy,  exasperated.  '  What  have  you  been 
making  secrets  about  ?  I'll  have  no  secrets  from  me  in  this  house, 
Dora.  Why,  when  Lucy  tells  you  something  important,  is  it  all 
hidden  up  from  me  ?  Nasty  close  ways  ! ' 

And  he  looked  at  her  threateningly. 

Nothing  piqued  the  old  Bohemian  so  much  as  the  constant 
assumption  of  the  people  about  him  that  he  was  a  grown-up  baby, 


194  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

of  no  discretion  at  all.  That  the  assumption  was  true  made  no 
difference  whatever  to  the  irritating  quality  of  it. 

Dora  dropped  her  head  a  little,  but  said  nothing.  David 
interposed  : 

'  Well,  now  Pit  tell  you  all  about  it.' 

His  tone  was  triumph  itself,  and  he  plunged  into  his  story. 
He  described  what  Purcell  had  meant  to  do,  and  how  nearly  he 
had  done  it.  In  a  month,  if  the  bookseller  had  had  his  way,  his 
young  rival  would  have  been  in  the  street,  with  all  his  connection 
to  make  over  again.  At  the  moment  there  was  not  another 
corner  to  be  had,  within  David's  means,  anywhere  near  the 
centre  of  the  town.  It  would  have  meant  a  completely  fresh 
beginning,  and  temporary  ruin. 

But  he  had  gone  to  Ancrum.  And  Ancrum  and  he  had 
bethought  them  of  the  rich  Unitarian  gentleman  who  had  been 
David's  sponsor  when  he  signed  his  agreement. 

There  and  then,  at  nine  o'clock  at  night,  Ancrum  had  gone 
off  to  Higher  Broughton,  where  the  good  man  lived,  and  laid  the 
case  before  him.  Mr.  Doyle  had  taken  the  night  to  think  it  over, 
and  the  following  morning  he  had  paid  a  visit  to  his  lawyer. 

'  He  and  his  wife  thought  it  a  burning  shame,  he  told  Mr. 
Ancrum ;  and,  besides,  he's  been  buying  up  house  property  in 
Manchester  for  some  time  past,  only  we  couldn't  know  that — that 
was  just  luck.  He  looked  upon  it  as  a  good  chance  both  for  him 
and  for  me.  He  told  his  lawyer  it  must  be  all  settled  in  three 
hours,  and  he  didn't  mind  the  price.  The  lawyer  found  out  that 
Purcell  was  haggling,  went  in  to  win,  put  the  cash  down,  and 
here  in  my  pocket  I've  got  the  fresh  agreement  between  me  and 
Mr.  Doyle — three  months'  notice  on  either  side,  and  no  likelihood 
of  my  being  turned  out,  if  I  want  to  stay,  for  the  next  three  or 
four  years.  Hurrah  ! ' 

And  the  lad,  quite  beside  himself  with  jubilation,  raised  the 
blue  cap  he  held  in  his  hand,  and  flung  it  round  his  head. 
Dora  stood  and  looked  at  him,  leaning  lightly  against  the  table, 
her  arms  behind  her.  His  triumph  carried  her  away  ;  her  lips 
parted  in  a  joyous  smile  ;  her  whole  soft,  rounded  figure  trembled 
with  animation  and  sympathy. 

As  for  Daddy,  he  could  not  contain  himself.  He  ran  to  the 
top  of  the  stairs,  and  sent  a  kitchen-boy  flying  for  a  bottle  of 
champagne. 

'  Drink,  you  varmint,  drink  ! '  he  said,  when  the  liquor  came, 
'  or  I'll  be  the  death  of  you  1  Hold  your  tongue,  Dora  !  Do  you 
think  a  man  can  put  up  with  temperance  drinks  when  his 
enemy's  smitten  hip  and  thigh  ?  Oh,  you  jewel,  David,  but 
you'll  bring  him  low,  lad — you'll  bring  him  low  before  you've 
done — promise  me  that.  I  shall  see  him  a  beggar  yet,  lad,  shan't 
I  ?  Oh,  nectar  ! ' 

And  Daddy  poured  down  his  champagne,  apostrophising  it 
and  David's  vengeance  together. 

Dora  looked  distressed. 


CHAP,  viz  YOUTH  195 

'  Father — Lucy  !    How  can  you  say  such  things  ? ' 

'  Lucy — eh  ? — Lucy  ?  She  won't  be  a  beggar.  She'll  marry  ; 
she's  got  a  bit  of  good  looks  of  her  own.  But,  David,  my  lad, 
what  was  it  you  were  saying  ?  How  was  it  you  got  wind  of  this 
precious  business  ? ' 

David  hesitated. 

'Well,  it  was  Miss  Purcell  told  me,'  he  said.  'She  came  to 
see  me  at  my  place  last  evening.' 

He  drew  himself  together  with  a  little  nervous  dignity,  as 
though  foreseeing  that  Daddy  would  make  remarks. 

'  Miss  Purcell ! — what,  Lucy  ? — Lucy  ?  Upon  my  word,  Davy  ! 
Why,  her  father'll  wring  her  neck  when  he  finds  it  out.  And  she 
came  to  warn  you  ? ' 

Daddy  stood  a  moment  taking  in  the  situation,  then,  with  a 
queer  grin,  he  walked  up  to  David  and  poked  him  in  the  ribs. 

'  So  there  were  passages — eh,  young  man — when  you  were  up 
there  ? ' 

The  young  fellow  straightened  himself,  with  a  look  of  annoy- 
ance. 

'  Nothing  of  the  sort,  Daddy ;  there  were  no  passages.  But 
Miss  Lucy's  done  me  a  real  friendly  act,  and  I'd  do  the  same  for 
her  any  day. ' 

Dora  had  sat  down  to  her  silks  again.  As  David  spoke  she 
bent  closely  over  them,  as  though  the  lamp-light  puzzled  her 
usually  quick  perception  of  shade  and  quality. 

As  for  Daddy,  he  eyed  the  lad  doubtfully. 

'She's  got  a  pretty  waist  and  a  brown  eye,  Davy,  and  she's 
seventeen.' 

'She  may  be  for  me,'  said  David,  throwing  his  head  back 
and  speaking  with  a  certain  emphasis  and  animation.  '  But  she's 
a  little  brick  to  have  given  me  notice  of  this  thing. ' 

The  warmth  of  these  last  words  produced  more  effect  on 
Daddy  than  his  previous  denials. 

'Dora,'  he  said,  looking  round — 'Dora,  do  you  believe  the 
varmint  ?  All  the  same,  you  know,  he'll  be  for  marrying  soon. 
Look  at  him ! '  and  he  pointed  a  thin  theatrical  finger  at  David 
from  across  the  room.  '  When  I  was  his  make  I  was  in  love  with 
half  the  girls  in  the  place.  Blue  eyes  here — brown  eyes  there- 
nothing  came  amiss  to  me.' 

'  Marrying  !  '  said  David,  with  an  impatient  shrug  of  the 
shoulders,  but  flushing  all  over.  '  You  might  wait,  I  think,  tilt 
I've  got  enough  to  keep  one  on,  let  alone  two.  If  you  talk  such 
stuff,  Daddy,  I'll  not  tell  you  my  secrets  when  there  are  any  to 
tell.' 

He  tried  to  laugh  it  off  ;  but  Dora's  grey  eye,  glancing  timidly 
round  at  him,  saw  that  he  was  in  some  discomfort.  There  was  a 
bright  colour  in  her  cheek  too,  and  her  hand  touched  her  silks 
uncertainly. 

'  Thank  you  for  nothing,  sir,'  said  Daddy,  unabashed.  '  Trust 
in  old  hound  like  me  for  scenting  out  what  he  wants.  But,  go 


196  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

along  with  you  !  I'm  disappointed  in  you.  The  young  men 
nowadays  have  got  no  llood !  They're  made  of  sawdust  and 
brown  paper.  The  world  was  our  orange,  and  we  sucked  it. 
Bedad,  we  did  !  But  you — cold-blooded  cubs — go  to  the  devil,  I 
tell  you,  and  read  your  Byron  ! ' 

And,  striking  an  attitude  which  was  a  boisterous  reminiscence 
of  Macready,  the  old  wanderer  flung  out  the  lines  : 

'Alas  !  when  mingling  souls  forget  to  blend, 
Death  hath  but  little  left  him  to  destroy. 
Ah  !  happy  years  !    Once  more,  who  would  not  be  a  boy  ? ' 

David  laughed  out.  Daddy  turned  petulantly  away,  and 
looked  out  of  window.  The  night  was  dreary,  dark,  and  wet. 

'  Dora  ! ' 

1  Yes,  father.' 

'  Manchester's  a  damned  dull  hole.     I'm  about  tired  of  it.' 

Dora  started,  and  her  colour  disappeared  in  an  instant.  She 
got  up  and  went  to  the  window. 

'  Father,  you  know  they'll  be  waiting  for  you  downstairs,'  she 
said,  putting  her  hand  on  his  shoulder.  '  They  always  say  they 
can't  get  on  without  you  on  debating  nights.' 

'  Stuff  and  nonsense  ! '  said  Daddy,  throwing  off  the  hand. 
But  he  looked  mollified.  The  new  reading-room  was  at  present 
his  pet  hobby  ;  his  interest  in  the  restaurant  proper  had  dropped 
a  good  deal  of  late,  or  so  Dora's  anxiety  persuaded  her. 

'  It's  quite  true,'  said  David.  '  Go  and  start  'em,  Daddy,  and 
I'll  come  down  soon  and  cut  in.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  speak  the 
roof  off  to-night,  and  I  don't  care  a  hang  about  what !  But  first 
I've  got  something  to  say  to  Miss  Dora.  I  want  to  ask  her  a 
favour.' 

He  came  forward  smiling.  She  gave  him  a  startled  look,  but 
her  eyes — poor  Dora  ! — could  not  light  on  him  now  without  taking 
a  new  brightness.  How  well  his  triumph  sat  on  him  !  How 
crisply  and  handsomely  his  black  hair  curled  above  his  open 
brow ! 

'  More  secrets,'  growled  Daddy. 

'  Nothing  of  any  interest,  Daddy.  Miss  Dora  can  tell  you  all 
about  it,  if  she  cares.  Now  go  along !  Start  'em  on  the  Bishop 
of  Peterborough  and  the  Secularists.  I've  got  a  lot  to  say  about 
that.' 

He  pushed  Daddy  laughingly  to  the  door,  and  came  back  again 
to  where  Dora  was  once  more  grappling  with  her  silks.  Her 
expression  had  changed  again.  Oh  !  she  had  so  many  things  to 
open  to  him,  if  only  she  could  find  the  courage. 

He  sat  down  and  looked  at  a  bit  of  her  embroidery,  which  lay 
uncovered  beside  her  on  the  frame. 

'  I  say,  that  is  fine  work  ! '  he  said,  wondering.  '  I  hope  you 
get  well  paid  for  it,  Miss  Dora.  You  ought.  Well,  now,  I  do 
want  to  ask  your  advice.  This  business  of  the  house  has  set  me 
thinking  about  a  lot  of  things.' 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  197 

He  lay  back  in  his  chair,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and 
threw  one  leg  over  the  other.  He  was  in  such  a  state  of  nervous 
excitement,  Dora  could  see,  that  he  could  hardly  keep  himself  still. 

'  Did  I  ever  tell  you  about  my  sister  ?  No,  I  know  I  haven't. 
I've  kept  it  dark.  But  now  I'm  settled  I  want  to  have  her  to  live 
with  me.  There's  no  one  but  us  two,  except  the  old  uncle  and 
aunt  that  brought  us  up.  I  must  stick  to  her — and  I  mean  to. 
But  she's  not  like  other  girls.  She's  a  queer  one.' 

He  stopped,  frowning  a  little  as  the  recollections  of  Louie 
rushed  across  him,  seeking  for  words  in  which  to  draw  her.  And 
directly  he  paused,  Dora,  who  had  dropped  her  silks  again  in  her 
sudden  astonishment,  burst  into  questions.  How  old  was  his 
sister?  Was  she  in  Manchester?  Had  she  a  trade?  Her  soul 
was  full  of  a  warm,  unexpected  joy,  her  manner  was  eager — 
receptive.  He  took  up  his  parable  and  told  the  story  of  his  child- 
hood and  Louie's  at  the  farm.  His  black  eye  kindled  as  he 
looked  past  Dora  into  the  past—into  the  bosom  of  the  Scout. 
Owing  partly  to  an  imaginative  gift,  partly  to  his  reading  habit, 
when  he  was  stimulated — when  he  was,  as  it  were,  talking  at 
large,  trying  to  present  a  subject  as  a  whole,  to  make  a  picture  of 
it — he  rose  into  ways  of  speech  quite  different  from  those  of  his 
class,  and  different  from  his  own  dialect  of  every  day.  This 
latent  capacity  for  fine  expression  was  mostly  drawn  out  at  this 
time  by  his  attempts  at  public  speaking.  But  to-night,  in  his 
excitement,  it  showed  in  his  talk,  and  Dora  was  bewildered.  Oh, 
how  clever  he  was  !  He  talked  like  a  book — just  like  a  book. 
She  pushed  her  chair  back  from  the  silks,  and  sat  absorbed  in  the 
pleasure  of  listening,  environed  too  by  the  happy  thought  that  he 
was  making  a  friend  of  her,  giving  her — plain,  insignificant, 
humble  Dora  Lomax — his  confidence. 

As  for  him,  the  more  he  talked  the  more  be  enjoyed  talking. 
Never  since  he  came  to  Manchester  Tiad  he  fallen  into  such  a 
moment  of  unburdenment,  of  intimacy,  or  something  like  it,  with 
any  human  being.  He  had  talked  to  Ancrum  and  to  John.  But 
that  was  quite  different.  No  man  confides  in  a  woman  as  he 
confides  in  a  man.  The  touch  of  difference  of  sex  gives  charm 
and  edge,  even  when,  as  was  the  case  here,  the  man  has  no  thrill 
whatever  in  his  veins,  and  no  thought  of  love-making  in  his  head. 

'  You  must  have  been  very  fond  of  your  sister,'  Dora  said  at 
last,  tremulously.  '  You  two  all  alone — and  no  mother. ' 

Somehow  the  soft  sentiment  in  her  words  and  tone  struck  him 
suddenly  as  incongruous.  His  expression  changed. 

'  Oh,  I  don't  know,'  he  said,  with  a  sort  of  laugh,  not  a  very 
bright  one.  '  Don't  you  imagine  I  was  a  pattern  brother  ;  I  was 
a  brute  to  her  lots  of  times.  And  Louie — an,  well,  you'll  see  for 
yourself  what  she's  like  ;  she's  a  queer  customer  sometimes.  And 
now  I'll  tell  you  what  I  wanted  to  ask  you,  Miss  Dora.  You  see, 
if  Louie  comes  it  won't  do  for  her  to  have  no  employment,  after 
she's  had  a  trade  all  day  ;  and  she  won't  take  to  mine — she  can't 
abide  books.' 


198  'THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

And  he  explained  to  her  his  perplexities — the  ebbing  of  the 
silk  trade  from  Manchester,  and  so  on.  He  might  hire  a  loom, 
but  Louie  would  get  no  work.  All  trades  have  their  special 
channels,  and  keep  to  them. 

So  it  had  occurred  to  him,  if  Louie  was  willing,  would  Dora 
take  her  as  an  apprentice,  and  teach  her  the  church  work  ?  He 
would  be  quite  ready  to  pay  for  the  teaching ;  that  would  be  only 
fair. 

'  Teach  her  my  work  ! '  cried  Dora,  instinctively  drawing  back. 
'  Oh,  I  don't  think  I  could.' 

He  coloured,  and  misunderstood  her.  Tn  a  great  labour-hive 
like  Lancashire,  with  its  large  and  small  industries,  the  native 
ear  is  very  familiar  with  the  jealous  tone  of  the  skilled  worker, 
threatened  with  competition  in  a  narrow  trade. 

'  I  didn't  mean  any  offence,'  he  said,  with  a  little  stiffness.  '  I 
don't  want  to  take  the  bread  out  of  anybody's  mouth.  If  there 
isn't  work  to  be  had,  you've  only  to  say  so,  Miss  Dora. ' 

'  Oh,  I  didn't  mean  that,'  she  cried,  wounded  in  her  turn. 
'  There's  plenty  of  work.  At  the  shop  last  week  they  didn't  know 
what  to  do  for  hands.  If  she  was  clever  at  it,  she'd  get  lots  of 
work.  But — 

She  laid  her  hand  on  her  frame  lovingly,  not  knowing  how 
to  explain  herself,  her  gentle  brows  knitting  in  the  effort  of 
thought. 

Her  work  was  so  much  more  to  her  than  ordinary  work  paid 
for  in  ordinary  coin.  Into  these  gorgeous  altar-cloths,  or  these 
delicate  wrappings  for  chalice  and  paten,  she  stitched  her  heart. 
To  work  at  them  was  prayer.  Jesus,  and  His  Mother,  and  the 
Saints  :  it  was  with  them  she  communed  as  her  stitches  flowed. 
She  sat  in  a  mystic,  a  heavenly  world.  And  the  silence  and 
solitude  of  her  work  made  one  of  its  chief  charms.  And  now  to 
be  asked  to  share  it  with  a  strange  girl,  who  could  not  love  it  as 
she  did,  who  would  take  it  as  hard  business — never  to  be  alone 
any  more  with  her  little  black  book  and  her  prayers  ! 

And  then  she  looked  up,  and  met  a  young  man's  half-offended 
look,  and  a  shy,  proud  eye,  in  which  the  nascent  friendship  of 
five  minutes  before  seemed  to  be  sinking  out  of  sight. 

'Oh  yes,  I  will, 'she  cried.  '  Of  course  I  will.  It  just  sounded 
a  bit  strange  to  me  at  first.  I've  been  so  used  to  be  alone 
always.' 

But  he  demurred  now — wished  stiffly  to  take  back  his  pro- 
posal. He  did  not  want  to  put  upon  her,  and  perhaps,  after  all, 
Louie  would  have  her  own  notions. 

But  she  could  not  bear  it,  and  as  he  retreated  she  pressed 
forward.  Of  course  there  was  work.  And  it  would  be  very  good 
for  her,  it  would  stir  her  up  to  take  a  pupil ;  it  was  just  her  old- 
maidish  ways — it  had  startled  her  a  bit  at  first. 

And  then,  her  reserve  giving  way  more  and  more  as  her 
emotion  grew,  she  confessed  herself  at  last  completely. 

'  You  see,  it's  not  just  work  to  me,  and  it's  not  the  money, 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  199 

though  I'm  glad  enough  for  that ;  but  it's  for  the  church  ;  and  I'd 
live  on  a  crust,  and  do  it  for  nothing,  if  I  could  ! ' 

She  looked  up  at  him — that  ardent  dream-life  of,  hers  leaping 
to  the  eyes,  transforming  the  pale  face. 

David  sat  silent  and  embarrassed.  He  did  not  know  what  to 
say — how  to  deal  with  this  turn  in  the  conversation. 

'  Oh,  I  know  you  think  I'm  just  foolish,'  she  said,  sadly,  taking 
up  her  needle.  '  You  always  did ;  but  I'll  take  your  sister — 
indeed  I  will.' 

'Perhaps  you'll  turn  her  your  way  of  thinking,'  said  David, 
with  a  little  awkward  laugh,  looking  round  for  his  hat.  'But 
Louie  isn't  an  easy  one  to  drive. ' 

'  Oh,  you  can't  drive  people  ! '  cried  Dora,  flushing  ;  '  you  can't, 
and  you  oughtn't.  But  if  Father  Eussell  talked  to  her  she  might 
like  him — and  the  church.  Oh,  Mr.  Grieve,  won't  you  go  one 
Sunday  and  hear  him — won't  you — instead  of— 

She  did  not  finish  her  sentence,  but  David  finished  it  for  her  : 
'  Instead  of  going  to  the  Hall  of  Science  ?  Well,  but  you  know, 
Miss  Dora,  I  being  what  I  am,  I  get  more  good  out  of  a  lecture  at 
the  Hall  of  Science  than  I  should  out  of  Father  Russell.  I  should 
be  quarrelling  with  him  all  the  time,  and  wanting  to  answer  him.' 

4  Oh,  you  couldn't,'  said  Dora  eagerly,  '  he's  so  good,  and  he's 
a  learned  man — I'm  sure  he  is.  Mr.  Foss,  the  curate,  told  me 
they  think  he'll  be  a  bishop  some  day. ' 

'All  the  better  for  him,'  said  David,  unmoved.  'It  don't 
make  any  difference  to  me.  No,  Miss  Dora,  don't  you  fret  your- 
self about  me.  Books  are  my  priests. ' 

He  stood  over  her,  his  hands  on  his  sides,  smiling. 

'  Oh,  no  ! '  cried  Dora,  involuntarily.  '  You  mustn't  say  that. 
Books  can't  bring  us  to  God.' 

'  No  more  can  priests,'  he  said,  with  a  sudden  flash  of  his  dark 
eyes,  a  sudden  dryness  of  his  tone.  '  If  there  is  a  God  to  bring  us 
to — prove  me  that  first,  Miss  Dora.  But  it's  a  shame  to  say 
these  things  to  you — that  it  is — and  I've  been  worrying  you  a  deal 
too  much  about  my  stupid  affairs.  Good  night.  We'll  talk  about 
Father  Russell  again  another  time.' 

He  ran  downstairs.  Dora  went  back  to  her  frame,  then 
pushed  it  away  again,  ran  eagerly  to  the  window,  and  pulled  the 
blind  aside.  Down  below  in  the  lighted  street,  now  emptying 
fast,  she  saw  the  tall  figure  emerge,  saw  it  run  down  the  street, 
and  across  St.  Mary's  Gate.  She  watched  it  till  it  disappeared  ; 
then  she  put  her  hands  over  her  face,  and  leant  against  the 
window-frame  weeping.  Oh,  what  a  sudden  descent  from  a 
moment  of  pure  joy  !  How  had  the  jarring  note  come  ?  They 
had  been  put  wrong  with  each  other  ;  and  perhaps,  after  all,  he 
would  be  no  more  to  her  now  than  before.  And  she  had  seemed 
to  make  such  a  leap  forward — to  come  so  near  to  him. 

'Oh!  I'll  just  be  good  to  his  sister,'  she  said  to  herself 
drearily,  with  an  ache  at  her  heart  that  was  agony. 

Then  she  thought  of  him  as  he  had  sat  there  beside  her  ;  and 


200  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

suddenly  in  her  pure  thought  there  rose  a  vision  of  herself  in  his 
arms,  her  head  against  his  broad  shoulder,  her  hand  stealing 
round  his  neck.  She  moved  from  the  window  and  threw  herself 
down  in  the  darkest  corner  of  the  room,  wrestling  desperately 
with  what  seemed  to  her  a  sinful  imagination.  She  ought  not  to 
think  of  him  at  all  ;  she  loathed  herself.  Father  Eussell  would 
tell  her  she  was  wicked.  He  had  no  faith — he  was  a  hardened 
unbeliever — and  she  could  not  make  herself  think  of  that  at  all — 
could  not  stop  herself  from  wanting — wanting  him  for  her  own, 
whatever  happened. 

And  it  was  so  foolish  too,  as  well  as  bad  ;  for  he  hadn't  an 
idea  of  falling  in  love  with  anybody— anyone  could  see  that.  And 
she  who  was  not  pretty,  and  not  a  bit  clever — it  was  so  likely  he 
would  take  a  fancy  to  her  !  Why,  in  a  few  years  he  would  be  a 
big  man,  he  would  have  made  a  fortune,  and  then  he  could  take 
his  pick. 

'  Oh  !  and  Lucy — Lucy  would  hate  me.' 

But  the  thought  of  Lucy,  instead  of  checking  her,  brought 
with  it  again  a  wild  gust  of  jealousy.  It  was  fiercer  than  before, 
the  craving  behind  it  stronger.  She  sat  up,  forcing  back  her 
tears,  her  whole  frame  tense  and  rigid.  Whatever  happened  he 
would  never  marry  Lucy  !  And  who  could  wish  it  ?  Lucy  was 
just  a  little,  vain,  selfish  thing,  and  when  she  found  David  Grieve 
wouldn't  have  her,  she  would  soon  forget  him.  The  surging 
longing  within  refused,  proudly  refused,  to  curb  itself — for  Lucy's 
sake. 

Then  the  bell  of  St.  Ann's  slowly  began  to  strike  ten  o'clock. 
It  brought  home  to  her  by  association  one  of  the  evening  hymns 
in  the  little  black  book  she  was  frequently  accustomed  to  croon  to 
herself  at  night  as  she  put  away  her  work : 

O  God  who  canst  not  change  nor  fail, 

Guiding  the  hours  as  they  roll  by, 
Brightening  with  beams  the  morning  pale, 

And  burning  in  the  mid-day  sky ! 

Quench  thou  the  fires  of  hate  and  strife, 

The  wasting  fever  of  the  heart  ; 
From  perils  guard  our  feeble  life, 

And  to  our  souls  thy  peace  impart. 

The  words  flowed  in  upon  her,  but  they  brought  no  comfort,  only 
a  fresh  sense  of  struggle  and  effort.  Her  Christian  peace  was 
gone.  She  felt  herself  wicked,  faithless,  miserable. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  stormy  night  outside,  David  was  running 
and  leaping  through  the  streets,  flourishing  his  stick  from  side  to 
side  in  cut  and  thrust  with  an  imaginary  enemy  whenever  the 
main  thoroughfares  were  left  behind,  and  he  found  himself  in 
some  dark  region  of  warehouses,  where  his  steps  echoed,  and  he 
was  king  alike  of  roadway  and  of  pavement. 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  201 

The  wind,  a  stormy  north-easter,  had  risen  since  the  afternoon. 
David  fought  with  it,  rejoiced  in  it.  After  the  little  hot  sitting- 
room,  the  stinging  freshness,  the  rough  challenge  of  the  gusts, 
were  delicious  to  him.  He  was  overflowing  with  spirits,  with 
health,  with  exultation. 

As  he  thought  of  Purcell  he  could  hardly  keep  himself  from 
shouting  aloud.  If  he  could  only  be  there  to  see  when  Purcell 
learnt  how  he  had  been  foiled  !  And  trust  Daddy  to  spread  a 
story  which  would  certainly  do  Purcell  no  good  !  No,  in  that 
direction  he  felt  that  he  was  probably  safe  from  attack  for  a  long 
time  to  come.  Success  beckoned  to  him ;  his  enemy  was  under 
foot ;  his  will  and  his  gifts  had  the  world  before  them. 

Father  Russell  indeed  !  Let  Dora  Lomax  set  him  on.  His 
young  throat  filled  with  contemptuous  laughter.  As  a  bookseller, 
he  knew  what  the  clergy  read,  what  they  had  to  say  for  them- 
selves. How  much  longer  could  it  go  on,  this  solemn  folly  of 
Christian  superstition  ?  'Just  give  us  a  good  Education  Bill,  and 
we  shall  see  ! ' 

Then,  as  he  fell  thinking  of  his  talk  with  Dora  and  Lomax,  he 
wished  impatiently  that  he  had  been  even  plainer  with  Daddy 
about  Lucy  Purcell.  With  regard  to  her  he  felt  himself  caught  in 
a  tangled  mesh  of  obligation.  He  must,  somehow,  return  her  the 
service  she  had  done  him.  And  then  all  the  world  would  think 
he  was  making  up  to  her  and  wanted  to  marry  her.  Meanwhile 
— in  the  midst  of  real  gratitude,  a  strong  desire  to  stand  between 
her  and  her  father,  and  much  eager  casting  about  for  some  means 
of  paying  her  back — his  inner  mind  was  in  reality  pitilessly  critical 
towards  her.  Her  overdone  primness  and  neatness,  her  fashion- 
able frocks,  of  which  she  was  so  conscious,  her  horror  of  things 
and  people  that  were  not  '  nice, '  her  contented  ignorance  and 
silly  chattering  ways — all  these  points  of  manner  and  habit  were 
scored  against  her  in  his  memory.  She  had  become  less  congenial 
to  him  rather  than  more  since  he  knew  her  first.  All  the  same, 
she  was  a  little  brick,  and  he  would  have  liked  one  minute  to  kiss 
her  for  her  pluck,  make  her  some  lordly  present,  and  the  next — 
never  to  see  her  again  ! 

In  reality  his  mind  at  this  moment  was  filling  with  romantic 
images  and  ideals  totally  remote  from  anything  suggested  by  his 
own  everyday  life.  A  few  weeks  before,  old  Barbier,  his  French 
master,  had  for  the  first  time  lent  him  some  novels  of  George 
Sand's.  David  had  carried  them  off,  had  been  enchanted  to  find 
that  he  could  now  read  them  with  ease  and  rapidity,  and  had 
plunged  straightway  into  the  new  world  thus  opened  to  him  with 
indescribable  zest  and  passion.  His  Greek  had  been  neglected, 
his  science  laid  aside.  Night  after  night  he  had  been  living  with 
Valentine,  with  Consuelo,  with  Caroline  in  'Le  Marquis  de 
Villemer.'  His  poetical  reading  of  the  winter  had  prepared  the 
way  for  what  was  practically  his  first  introduction  to  the  modern 
literature  of  passion.  The  stimulating  novelty  and  foreignness 
of  it  was  stirring  all  his  blood.  George  Sand's  problems,  her 


202  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

situations,  her  treatment  of  the  great  questions  of  sex,  her  social 
and  religious  enthusiasms — these  things  were  for  the  moment  a 
new  gospel  to  this  provincial  self-taught  lad,  as  they  had  been 
forty  years  before  to  the  youth  of  1830.  Under  the  vitalising 
touch  of  them  the  man  was  fast  developing  out  of  the  boy ;  the 
currents  of  the  nature  were  setting  in  fresh  directions.  And  in 
such  a  mood,  and  with  such  preoccupations,  how  was  one  to  bear 
patiently  with  foolish,  friendly  fingers,  or  with  uncomfortable 
thoughts  of  your  own,  pointing  you  to  Lucy  Purcell  ?  With  the 
great  marriage-night  scene  from  '  Valentine '  thrilling  in  your 
mind,  how  was  it  possible  to  think  of  the  prim  self-conceit,  the 
pettish  temper  and  mincing  airs  of  that  little  person  in  Half  Street 
without  irritation  ? 

No,  no  !  TJie  unknown,  the  unforeseen  !  The  young  man 
plunged  through  the  rising  storm,  and  through  the  sleety  rain, 
which  had  begun  to  beat  upon  him,  with  face  and  eyes  uplifted 
to  the  night.  It  was  as  though  he  searched  the  darkness  for  some 
form  which,  even  as  he  looked,  began  to  take  vague  and  luminous 
shape  there. 

Next  morning  Daddy,  in  his  exultation,  behaved  himself  with 
some  grossness  towards  his  enemy.  About  eleven  o'clock  he 
became  restless,  and  began  patrolling  Market  Place,  passing  every 
now  and  then  up  the  steps  into  the  narrow  passage  of  Half  Street, 
and  so  round  by  the  Cathedral  and  home.  He  had  no  definite 
purpose,  but  '  have  a  squint  at  Tom,'  under  the  circumstances,  he 
must,  some  way  or  other. 

And,  sure  enough,  as  he  was  coming  back  through  Half  Street 
on  one  of  his  rounds,  and  was  within  a  few  yards  of  Pure-ell's 
window,  the  bookseller  came  out  with  his  face  set  in  Daddy's 
direction.  Purcell,  whose  countenance,  so  far  as  Daddy  could 
see  at  first  sight,  was  at  its  blackest  and  sourest,  and  whose  eyes 
were  on  the  ground,  did  not  at  once  perceive  his  adversary,  and 
came  stem  on. 

The  moment  was  irresistible.  Laying  his  thumbs  in  his  waist- 
coat pocket,  and  standing  so  as  to  bar  his  brother-in-law's  path, 
Daddy  launched  a  few  unctuous  words  in  his  smoothest  voice. 

'  Tom,  me  boy,  thou  hast  imagined  a  device  which  thou  wast 
not  able  to  perform.  But  the  Lord,  Tom,  hath  made  thee  turn 
thy  back.  And  they  of  thy  own  household,  Tom,  have  lifted  up 
the  heel  against  thee.' 

Purcell,  strong,  dark-browed  fellow  that  he  was,  wavered  and 
blenched  for  a  moment  under  the  surprise  of  this  audacious 
attack.  Then  with  an  oath  he  put  out  his  hand,  seized  Daddy's 
thin  shoulder,  flung  him  violently  round,  and  passed  him. 

'  Speak  to  me  again  in  the  street,  you  scoundrel,  and  I'll  give 
you  in  charge  ! '  he  threw  behind  him,  as  he  strode  on  just  in  time 
to  avoid  a  flight  of  street-arabs,  who  had  seen  the  scuffle  from  a 
distance  and  were  bearing  down  eagerly  upon  him. 

Daddy  went  home  in  the  highest  spirits,  stepping  jauntily 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  203 

along  like  a  man  who  has  fulfilled  a  mission.  But  when  he  came 
to  boast  himself  to  Dora,  he  found  to  his  chagrin  that  he  had 
only  earned  a  scolding.  Dora  flushed  up,  her  soft  eyes  all  aflame. 

'  You've  done  nothing  but  mischief,  father, '  said  Dora,  bitterly. 
'  How  could  you  say  such  things  ?  You  might  have  left  Uncle 
Tom  to  find  out  for  himself  about  Lucy.  He'll  be  mad  enough 
without  your  stirring  him  up.  Now  he'll  forbid  her  to  come  here, 
or  see  me  at  all.  I  don't  know  what'll  become  of  that  child  ;  and 
whatever  possessed  you  to  go  aggravating  him  worse  and  worse  I 
can't  think.' 

Daddy  blinked  under  this,  but  soon  recovered  himself.  No 
one,  he  vowed,  could  be  expected  to  put  up  for  ever  with  Purcell's 
mean  tricks.  He  had  held  his  tongue  for  twenty-one  years,  and 
now  he  had  paid  back  one  little  text  in  exchange  for  the  hundreds 
wherewith  Purcell  had  been  wont  to  break  his  bones  for  him  in 
past  days.  As  for  Dora,  she  hadn't  the  spirit  of  a  fly. 

'  Well,  I  dare  say  I  am  afraid,'  said  Dora,  despondently.  '  I 
saw  Uncle  Tom  yesterday,  too,  and  he  gave  me  a  look  made  me 
feel  cold  down  my  back.  I  don't  like  anybody  to  hate  us  like 
that,  father.  Who  knows — 

A  tremor  ran  through  her.  She  gave  her  father  a  piteous, 
childish  look.  She  had  the  timidity,  the  lack  of  self-confidence 
which  seems  to  cling  through  life  to  those  who  have  been  at  a 
disadvantage  with  the  world  in  their  childhood  and  youth.  The 
anger  of  a  man  like  Purcell  terrified  her,  lay  like  a  nightmare  on 
a  sensitive  and  introspective  nature. 

'  Pish  ! '  said  Daddy,  contemptuously  ;  '  I  should  like  to  know 
what  harm  he  can  do  us,  now  that  I've  turned  so  d d  respec- 
table. Though  it  is  a  bit  hard  on  a  man  to  have  to  keep  so  in 
order  to  spite  his  brother-in-law.' 

Dora  laughed  and  sighed.  She  came  up  to  her  father's  chair, 
put  his  hair  straight,  re-tied  his  tie,  and  then  kissed  him  on  the 
cheek. 

'  Father,  you're  not  getting  tired  of  the  Parlour  ? '  she  said, 
unsteadily.  He  evaded  her  downward  look,  and  tried  to  shake 
her  off. 

'  Don't  I  slave  for  you  from  morning  till  night,  you  thankless 
chit,  you  ?  And  don't  you  begrudge  me  all  the  little  amusements 
which  turn  the  tradesman  into  the  man  and  sweeten  the  pill  of 
bondage — eh,  you  poor-sou  led  thing  ? ' 

Her  eyes,  however,  drew  his  after  them,  whether  he  would  or 
no,  and  they  surveyed  each  other — he  uneasily  hostile  ;  she  sad. 
She  slowly  shook  her  head,  and  he  perfectly  understood  what  was 
in  her  mind,  though  she  did  not  speak.  He  had  been  extremely 
slack  at  business  lately ;  the  month's  accounts  made  up  that 
morning  had  been  unusually  disappointing  ;  and  twice  during  the 
last  ten  days  Dora  had  sat  up  till  midnight  to  let  her  father  in, 
and  had  tried  with  all  the  energy  of  a  sinking  heart  to  persuade 
herself  that  it  was  accident,  and  that  he  was  only  excited,  and 
not  drunk. 


204  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  H 

Now,  as  she  stood  looking  at  him,  suddenly  all  the  horror  of 
these  long-past  days  came  back  upon  her,  thrown  up  against  the 
peace  of  the  last  few  years.  She  locked  her  hands  round  his  neck 
with  a  vehement  pathetic  gesture. 

'  Father,  be  good  to  me  !  don't  let  bad  people  take  you  away 
from  me — don't,  father — you're  all  I  have — all  I  ever  shall  have. ' 

Daddy's  green  eyes  wavered  again  uncomfortably. 

'  Stuff ! '  he  said,  irritably.  '  You'll  get  a  husband  directly,  and 
think  no  more  of  me  than  other  girls  do  when  the  marrying  fit 
takes  'em.  What  are  you  grinning  at  now,  I  should  like  to  know  ? ' 

For  she  was  smiling — a  light  tremulous  smile  which  puzzled 
him. 

'  At  you,  father.  You'll  have  to  keep  me  whether  you  like  it 
or  no.  For  I'm  not  a  marrying  sort.' 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  curious  defiance,  her  lip  twitching. 

'  Oh,  we  know  all  about  that ! '  said  Daddy,  impatiently,  add- 
ing in  a  mincing  voice,  '  "  I  will  not  love  ;  if  I  do  hang  me  ;  i' 
faith  I  will  not."  No,  my  pretty  dear,  not  till  the  "wimpled, 
whining,  purblind,  wayward  boy  "  comes  this  road — oh,  no,  not 
till  next  time  !  Quite  so.' 

She  let  him  rail,  and  said  nothing.  She  sat  down  to  her 
work  ;  he  faced  round  upon  her  suddenly,  and  said,  frowning  : 

'  What  do  you  mean  by  it,  eh  ?  You're  as  good-looking  as 
anybody ! ' 

'Well,  I  want  you  to  think  it,  father,'  she  said,  affectionately, 
raising  her  eyes  to  his.  A  mother  must  have  seen  the  shrinking 
sadness  beneath  the  smile.  What  Daddy  saw  was  simply  a 
rounded  girlish  face,  with  soft  cheeks  and  lips  which  seemed  to 
him  made  for  kissing  ;  nothing  to  set  the  Thames  on  fire,  perhaps, 
but  why  should  she  run  herself  down  ?  It  annoyed  him,  touched 
his  vanity. 

'  Oh,  I  dare  say ! '  he  said  to  her,  roughly,  with  an  affected 
brutality.  '  But  you'll  be  precious  disappointed  if  some  one  else 
doesn't  think  so  too.  Don't  tell  me  ! ' 

She  bent  over  her  frame  -without  speaking.  But  her  heart 
filled  with  bitterness,  and  a  kind  of  revolt  against  her  life. 

Meanwhile  her  conscience  accused  her  about  Lucy.  Lucy 
must  have  got  herself  into  trouble  at  home,  that  she  was  sure  of. 
And  it  was  unlike  her  to  keep  it  to  herself — not  to  come  and 
complain. 

Some  days — a  week — passed.  But  Dora  dared  not  venture 
herself  into  her  uncle's  house  after  Daddy's  escapade,  and  she 
was,  besides,  much  pressed  with  her  work.  A  whole  set  of  altar 
furniture  for  a  new  church  at  Blackburn  had  to  be  finished  by  a 
given  day. 

The  affairs  of  the  Parlour  troubled  her,  and  she  got  up  long 
before  it  was  light  to  keep  the  books  in  order  and  to  plan  for  the 
day.  Daddy  had  no  head  for  figures,  and  he  seemed  to  her  to  be 
growing  careless  about  expenses.  Her  timid,  over-anxious  mind 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  205 

conjured  up  the  vision  of  a  slowly  rising  tide  of  debt,  and  it 
haunted  her  all  day.  When  she  went  to  her  frame  she  was 
already  tired  out,  and  yet  there  she  sat  over  it  hour  after  hour. 

Daddy  was  blind.  But  Sarah,  the  stout  cook,  who  worshipped 
her,  knew  well  enough  that  she  was  growing  thin  and  white. 

'  If  yo  doan't  draw  in  yo'll  jest  do  ypursel  a  mischief,'  she  said 
to  her,  angrily.  '  Yo're  nowt  but  a  midge  ony ways,  and  a  body 
'11  soon  be  able  to  see  through  yo.' 

'  I  shall  be  all  right,  Sarah,'  Dora  would  say. 

'Aye,  we'st  aw  on  us  be  aw  reet  in  our  coffins,'  returned  the 
irate  Sarah.  Then,  melting  into  affection,  '  Neaw,  honey,  be 
raysonable,  an'  I'st  just  run  round  t'  corner,  an'  cook  you  up  a 
bit  o'  meat  for  your  supper.  Yo  git  no  strength  eawt  i'  them 
messin  things  yo  eat.  Theer's  nowt  but  wind  in  em.' 

But  not  even  the  heterodox  diet  with  which,  every  now  and 
then,  Dora  for  peace'  sake  allowed  herself  to  be  fed,  behind 
Daddy's  back,  put  any  colour  into  her  cheeks.  She  went  heavily 
in  these  days,  and  the  singularly  young  and  childish  look  which 
she  had  kept  till  now  went  into  gradual  eclipse. 

David  Grieve  dropped  in  once  or  twice  during  the  week  to 
laugh  and  gossip  about  Purcell  with  Daddy.  Thanks  to  Daddy's 
tongue,  the  bookseller's  plot  against  his  boy  rival  was  already 
known  to  a  large  circle  of  persons,  and  was  likely  to  cost  him 
customers. 

Whenever  she  heard  the  young  full  voice  below  or  on  the 
stairs,  Dora  would,  as  it  were,  draw  herself  together — stand  on 
her  defence.  Sometimes  she  asked  him  eagerly  about  his  sister. 
Had  he  written  ?  No  ;  he  thought  he  would  still  wait  a  week  or 
two.  Ah,  well,  he  must  let  her  know. 

And,  on  the  whole,  she  was  glad  when  he  went,  glad  to  get  to 
bed  and  sleep.  Being  no  sentimental  heroine,  she  was  prosaically 
thankful  that  she  kept  her  sleep.  Otherwise  she  must  have  fallen 
ill,  and  the  accounts  would  have  gone  wrong. 

At  last  one  evening  came  a  pencil  note  from  Lucy,  in  these 
terms  : 

'  You  may  come  and  see  me,  father  says.  I've  been  ill. — 
LUCY.' 

In  a  panic  Dora  put  on  her  things  and  ran.  Mary  Ann,  the 
little  hunted  maid,  let  her  in,  looking  more  hunted  and  scared 
than  usual.  Miss  Lucy  was  better,  she  said,  but  she  had  been 
'  terr'ble  bad.'  No,  she  didn't  know  what  it  was  took  her. 
They'd  got  a  nurse  for  her  two  nights,  and  she,  Mary  Ann,  had 
been  run  off  her  legs. 

'  Why  didn't  you  send  for  me  ? '  cried  Dora,  and  hurried  up  to 
the  attic.  Purcell  did  not  appear. 

Lucy  was  waiting  for  her,  looking  out  eagerly  from  a  bank  of 
pillows. 

Dora  could  not  restrain  an  exclamation  which  was  almost  a 
cry.  She  could  not  have  believed  that  anyone  could  have  changed 
so  in  ten  days.  Evidently  the  acute  stage — whatever  had  been 


306  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  11 

the  illness — was  past.  There  was  already  a  look  of  convalescence 
in  the  white  face,  with  its  black-rimmed  eyes  and  peeling  lips. 
But  the  loss  of  flesh  was  extraordinary  for  so  short  a  time.  The 
small  face  was  so  thinned  and  blanched  that  the  tangled  masses 
of  golden-brown  hair  in  which  it  was  framed  seemed  ridiculously 
out  of  proportion  to  it ;  the  hand  playing  with  some  grapes  on 
the  counterpane  was  of  a  ghostly  lightness. 

Dora  was  shocked  almost  beyond  speaking.  She  stood  hold- 
ing Lucy's  hand,  and  Lucy  looked  up  at  her,  evidently  enjoying 
her  consternation,  for  a  smile  danced  in  her  hollow  eyes. 

'  Lucy,  why  didn't  you  send  for  me  ? ' 

'  Because  I  was  so  feverish  at  first.  I  was  all  light-headed, 
and  didn't  know  where  1  was  ;  and  then  I  was  so  weak  I  didn't 
care  about  anything,'  said  Lucy,  in  a  small  thread  of  a  voice. 

'  What  was  it  ? ' 

'Congestion  of  the  lungs,'  said  the  girl,  with  pride.  'They 
just  stopped  it,  or  you'd  be  laying  me  out  now,  Dora.  Dr.  Alford 
told  father  I  was  dreadful  run-down  or  I'd  never  have  taken  it. 
I'm  to  go  to  Hastings.  Father's  got  a  cousin  there  that  lets  lodg- 
ings.' 

'  But  how  did  you  get  so  ill,  Lucy  ? ' 

Lucy  was  silent  a  bit.     Then  she  said  : 

'  Sit  down  close  here.     My  voice  is  so  bad  still.' 

Dora  sat  close  to  her  pillow,  and  bent  over,  stroking  her 
hands  with  emotion.  The  fright  of  her  entrance  was  still  upon 
her. 

'  Well,  you  know,'  she  said  in  a  hoarse  whisper,  '  father  found 
out  about  me  and  Mr.  Grieve — I  don't  know  how,  but  it  was  one 
morning.  I  was  sitting  in  here,  and  he  came  in  all  white,  with 
his  eyes  glaring.  I  thought  he  was  going  to  kill  me,  and  I  was 
that  frightened,  I  watched  my  chance,  and  ran  out  of  the  door 
and  along  into  Mill  Gate  as  fast  as  I  could  to  get  away  from  him  ; 
and  then  I  thought  I  saw  him  coming  after  me,  and  I  ran  on 
across  the  bridge  and  up  Chapel  Street  a  long,  long  way.  I  was 
in  a  terrible  fright,  and  mad  with  him  besides.  I  declared  to 
myself  I'd  never  come  back  here.  Well,  it  was  pouring  with 
rain,  and  I  got  wet  through.  Then  I  didn't  know  where  to  go, 
and  what  do  you  think  I  did  ?  I  just  got  into  the  Broughton 
tram,  and  rode  up  and  down  all  day  !  I  had  a  shilling  or  two  in 
my  pocket,  and  I  waited  and  dodged  a  bit  at  either  end,  so  the 
conductor  shouldn't  find  out.  And  that  was  what  did  it — sitting 
in  my  wet  things  all  day.  I  didn't  think  anything  about  dinner, 
I  was  that  mad.  But  when  it  got  dark,  I  thought  of  that  girl — 
you  know  her,  too — Minnie  Park,  that  lives  with  her  brother  and 
sells  fents,  up  Cannon  Gate.  And  somehow  I  dragged  up  there — 
I  thought  I'd  ask  her  to  take  me  in.  And  what  happened  I  don't 
rightly  know.  I  suppose  I  was  took  with  a  faint  before  I  could 
explain  anything,  for  I  was  shivering  and  pretty  bad  when  I  got 
there.  Anyway,  she  put  me  in  a  cab  and  brought  me  home  ;  and 
I  don't  remember  anything  about  it,  for  I  was  queer  in  the  head 


CHAP,  vn  YOUTH  207 

very  soon  after  they  got  me  to  bed.  Oh,  I  was  bad  !  It  was  just 
a  squeak,' — said  Lucy,  her  voice  dropping  from  exhaustion  ;  but 
her  eyes  glittered  in  her  pinched  face  with  a  curious  triumph, 
difficult  to  decipher. 

Dora  kissed  her  tenderly,  and  entreated  her  not  to  talk  ;  she 
was  sure  it  was  bad  for  her.  But  Lucy,  as  usual,  would  not  be 
managed.  She  held  herself  quite  still,  gathering  breath  and 
strength  ;  then  she  began  again  : 

'  If  I'd  died,  perhaps  he'd  have  been  sorry.  You  know  who  I 
mean.  It  was  all  along  of  him.  And  father  '11  never  forgive  me 
— never.  He  looks  quite  different  altogether  somehow.  Dora ! 
you're  not  to  tell  him  anything  till  I've  got  right  away.  I  think — 
I  think — I  hate  him  ! ' 

And  suddenly  her  beautiful  brown  eyes  opened  wide  and 
fierce. 

Dora  hung  over  her,  a  strange,  mingled  passion  in  her  look. 
'  You  poor  little  thing  ! '  she  said  slowly,  with  a  deep  emphasis, 
answering  not  the  unreal  Lucy  of  those  last  words,  but  the  real 
one,  so  pitifully  evident  beneath. 

'  But  look  here,  Dora  ;  when  I'm  gone  away,  you  may  tell  him, 
you  must  tell  him,  Dora,'  said  the  child,  imperiously.  'I'd  not 
have  him  see  me  now  for  anything.  I  made  Mary  Ann  put  all 
the  glasses  away.  I  don't  want  to  remember  what  a  fright  I  am. 
But  at  Hastings  I'll  soon  get  well ;  and — and  remember,  Dora, 
you  are  to  tell  him.  I'd  like  him  to  know  I  nearly  caught  my 
death  that  day,  and  that  it  was  all  along  of  him  1 ' 

She  laid  her  hands  across  each  other  on  the  sheet  with  a  curious 
sigh  of  satisfaction,  and  was  quiet  for  a  little,  while  Dora  held  her 
hand.  But  it  was  not  long  before  the  stillness  broke  up  in  sudden 
agitation.  A  tremor  ran  through  her,  and  she  caught  Dora's 
fingers.  In  her  weakness  she  could  not  control  herself,  and  her 
inmost  trouble  escaped  her. 

'  Oh,  Dora,  he  wasn't  kind  to  me,  not  a  bit — when  I  went  to 
tell  him  that  night.  Oh  !  I  cried  when  I  came  home.  I  did  think 
he'd  have  taken  it  different. ' 

'  What  did  he  say  ? '  asked  Dora,  quietly.  Her  face  was  turned 
away  from  Lucy,  but  she  still  held  her  hand. 

'  Oh,  I  don't  know  ! '  said  Lucy,  moving  her  head  restlessly 
from  side  to  side  and  gulping  down  a  sob.  '  I  believe  he  was  just 
sorry  it  was  me  he'd  got  to  thank.  Oh,  I  don't  know  ! — I  don't 
know  ! — very  likely  he  didn't  mean  it.' 

She  waited  a  minute,  then  she  began  again  : 

'  Oh  of  course  you  think  I'm  silly  ;  and  that  I'd  have  much 
more  chance  if  I  turned  proud,  and  pretended  I  didn't  care.  I 
know  some  girls  say  they'd  never  let  a  man  know  they  cared  for 
him  first.  I  don't  believe  in  'em  !  But  I  don't  care.  I  can't  help 
it.  It's  my  way.  But,  Dora,  look  here  ! ' 

The  tears  gathered  thick  in  her  eyes.  Dora,  bending  anxiously 
over  her,  was  startled  by  the  change  of  expression  in  her.  From 
what  depths  of  new  emotion  had  the  silly  Lucy  caught  the  sweet- 


208  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

ness  which  trembled  for  a  moment  through  every  line  of  her  little 
trivial  face  ? 

'  You  know,  Dora,  it  was  all  nonsense  at  the  beginning.  I  just 
wanted  some  one  to  amuse  myself  with  and  pay  me  attentions. 
But  it  isn't  nonsense  now.  And  I  don't  want  him  all  for  myself. 
Friday  night  I  thought  I  was  going  to  die.  .  I  don't  care  whether 
the  doctor  did  or  not ;  /  did.  And  I  prayed  a  good  deal.  It  was 
queer  praying,  I  dare  say.  I  was  very  light-headed,  but  I  thanked 
God  I  loved  him,  though — though — he  didn't  care  about  me ;  and 
I  thought  if  I  did  get  well,  and  he  were  to  take  a  fancy  to  me, 
I'd  show  him  I  could  be  as  nice  as  other  girls.  I  wouldn't  want 
everything  for  myself,  or  spend  a  lot  of  money  on  dress.' 

She  broke  off  for  want  of  breath.  This  moral  experience  of 
hers  was  so  new  and  strange  to  her  that  she  could  hardly  find 
words  in  which  to  clothe  it. 

Dora  had  slipped  down  beside  her  and  buried  her  face  in  the 
bed.  When  Lucy  stopped,  she  still  knelt  there  in  a  quivering 
silence.  But  Lucy  could  not  bear  her  to  be  silent — she  must  have 
sympathy. 

'  Aren't  you  glad,  Dora  ? '  she  said  presently,  when  she  had 
gathered  strength  again.  'I  thought  you'd  be  glad.  You've 
always  wanted  me  to  turn  religious.  And — and — perhaps,  when 
I  get  well  and  come  back,  I'll  go  with  you  to  St.  Damian's,  Dora. 
I  don't  know  what  it  is.  I  suppose  it's  caring  about  somebody — 
and  being  ill — makes  one  feel  like  this.' 

And,  drawing  herself  from  Dora's  hold,  she  turned  on  her 
side,  put  both  her  thin  hands  under  her  cheek,  and  lay  staring  at 
the  window  with  a  look  which  had  a  certain  dreariness  in  it. 

Dora  at  last  raised  herself.  Lucy  could  not  see  her  face. 
There  was  in  it  a  sweet  and  solemn  resolution — a  new  light  and 
calm. 

'  Dear  Lucy,'  she  said,  tremulously,  laying  her  cheek  against 
her  cousin's  shoulder,  '  God  speaks  to  us  when  we  are  unhappy 
— that  was  what  you  felt.  He  makes  everything  a  voice  to  call 
unto  Himself.' 

Lucy  did  not  answer  at  once.  Then  suddenly  she  turned,  and 
said  eagerly : 

'  Dora,  did  you  ever  ask  him — did  you  ever  find  out — whether 
he  was  thinking  about  getting  married  ?  You  said  you  would. ' 

'  He  isn't,  Lucy.  He  was  vexed  with  father  for  speaking  about 
it.  I  think  he  feels  he  must  make  his  way  first.  His  business 
takes  him  up  altogether. ' 

Lucy  gave  an  irritable  sigh,  closed  her  eyes,  and  would  talk 
no  more.  Dora  stayed  with  her,  and  nursed  her  through  the 
evening.  When  at  last  the  nurse  arrived  who  was  to  take  charge 
of  her  through  the  night,  Lucy  pulled  Dora  down  to  her  and  said, 
in  a  hoarse,  excitable  whisper  : 

'  Mind  you  tell  him — that  I  nearly  died — that  father  '11  never 
be  the  same  to  me  again — and  it  was  all  for  him  !  You  needn't 
say  /said  so.' 


CHAP,  vii  YOUTH  209 

Late  that  night  Dora  stood  long  at  her  attic-window  in  the 
roof  looking  out  at  the  April  night.  From  a  great  bank  of  clouds 
to  the  east  the  moon  was  just  appearing,  sending  her  light  along 
the  windy  streamers  which,  issuing  from  the  main  mass,  spread 
like  wide  open  fingers  across  the  inner  heaven.  Opposite  there 
was  an  old  timbered  house,  one  of  the  few  relics  of  an  earlier 
Manchester,  which  still,  in  the  very  centre  of  the  modern  city, 
thrusts  out  its  broad  eaves  and  overhanging  stories  beyond  the 
line  of  the  street.  Above  and  behind  it,  roof  beyond  roof,  to  the 
western  limit  of  sight,  rose  block  after  block  of  warehouses,  vast 
black  masses,  symbols  of  the  great  town,  its  labours  and  its 
wealth  ;  far  to  the  right,  closing  the  street,  the  cathedral  cut  the 
moonlit  sky  ;  and  close  at  hand  was  an  old  inn,  with  a  wide  arch- 
way, under  which  a  huge  dog  lay  sleeping. 

Town  and  sky,  the  upper  clouds  and  stars,  the  familiar  streets 
and  buildings  below — to-night  they  were  all  changed  for  Dora, 
and  it  was  another  being  that  looked  at  them.  In  all  intense 
cases  of  religious  experience  the  soul  lies  open  to  '  voices ' — to 
impressions  which  have  for  it  the  most  vivid  and,  so  to  speak, 
physical  reality.  Jeanne  d' Arc's  visions  were  but  an  extreme 
instance  of  what  humbler  souls  have  known  in  their  degree  in  all 
ages.  The  heavenly  voices  speak,  and  the  ear  actually  hears.  So 
it  was  with  Dora.  It  seemed  to  her  that  she  had  been  walking  in 
a  feverish  loneliness  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  ; 
that  one  like  unto  the  Son  of  Man  had  drawn  her  thence  with 
warning  and  rebuke,  and  she  was  now  at  His  feet,  clothed  and  in 
her  right  mind.  Words  were  in  her  ear,  repeated  again  and 
again — peremptory  words  which  stabbed  and  healed  at  once  : 
'  Daughter,  thou  shalt  not  covet.  I  have  refused  thee  this  gift. 
If  it  be  My  will  to  give  it  to  another,  what  is  that  to  thee  ? 
Follow  thou  Me.' 

As  she  sank  upon  her  knees,  she  thought  of  the  confession  she 
would  make  on  Sunday — of  the  mysterious  sanctity  and  sweetness 
of  the  single  life — of  the  vocation  of  sacrifice  laid  upon  her. 
There  rose  in  her  a  kind  of  ecstasy  of  renunciation.  Her  love — 
already  so  hopeless,  so  starved  ! — was  there  simply  that  she  might 
offer  it  up — burn  it  through  and  through  with  the  fires  of  the 
spirit. 

Lucy  should  never  know,  and  David  should  never  know. 
Unconsciously,  sweet  soul,  there  was  a  curious  element  of  spiritual 
arrogance  mingled  with  this  absolute  surrender  of  the  one 
passionate  human  desire  her  life  was  ever  to  wrestle  with.  The 
baptised  member  of  Christ's  body  could  not  pursue  the  love  of 
David  Grieve,  could  not  marry  him  as  he  was  now,  without  risk 
and  sin.  But  Lucy — the  child  of  schism,  to  whom  the  mysteries 
of  Church  fellowship  and  sacramental  grace  were  unknown — for 
her,  in  her  present  exaltation,  Dora  felt  no  further  scruples. 
Lucy's  love  was  clearly  '  sent '  to  her ;  it  was  right,  whether  it 
were  ultimately  happy  or  no,  because  of  the  religious  effect  it  had 
already  had  upon  her. 


210  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

The  human  happiness  Dora  dared  no  longer  grasp  at  for  her- 
self she  yearned  now  to  pour  lavishly,  quickly,  into  Lucy's  hands. 
Only  so — such  is  our  mingled  life  ! — could  she  altogether  still, 
violently  and  by  force,  a  sort  of  upward  surge  of  the  soul  which 
terrified  her  now  and  then.  A  mystical  casuistry,  bred  in  her 
naturally  simple  nature  by  the  subtle  influences  of  a  long- 
descended  Christianity,  combined  in  her  with  a  piteous  human 
instinct.  When  she  rose  from  her  knees  she  was  certain  that  she 
would  never  win  and  marry  David  Grieve ;  she  was  equally 
certain  that  she  would  do  all  in  her  power  to  help  little  Lucy  to 
win  and  marry  him. 

So,  like  them  of  old,  she  pressed  the  spikes  into  her  flesh,  and 
found  a  numbing  consolation  in  the  pain. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SOME  ten  days  more  elapsed  before  Lucy  was  pronounced  fit  to 
travel  south.  During  this  time  Dora  saw  her  frequently,  and 
the  bond  between  the  two  girls  grew  much  closer  than  before. 
On  the  one  hand,  Lucy  yielded  herself  more  than  she  had  ever 
done  yet  to  Dora's  example  and  persuasion,  promised  to  go  to 
church  and  see  at  least  what  it  was  like  when  she  got  to  Hastings, 
and  let  Dora  provide  her  with  some  of  her  favourite  High  Church 
devotional  books.  On  the  other,  it  was  understood  between 
them  that  Dora  would  look  after  Lucy's  interests,  and  keep  her 
informed  how  the  land  lay  while  she  was  in  the  south,  and  Lucy, 
with  the  blindness  of  self-love,  trusted  herself  to  her  cousin  with- 
out a  suspicion  or  a  qualm. 

While  she  was  tending  Lucy,  Dora  never  saw  Purcell  but 
twice,  when  she  passed  him  in  the  little  dark  entry  leading  to 
the  private  part  of  the  house,  and  on  those  occasions  he  did  not, 
so  far  as  she  could  perceive,  make  any  answer  whatever  to  her 
salutation.  He  was  changed,  she  thought.  He  had  always  been 
a  morose-looking  man,  with  an  iron  jaw  ;  but  now  there  was  a 
fixed  venom  and  disquiet,  as  well  as  a  new  look  of  age,  in  the 
sallow  face,  which  made  it  doubly  unpleasing.  She  would  have 
been  sorry  for  his  loneliness  and  his  disappointment  in  Lucy  but 
for  the  remembrance  of  his  mean  plot  against  David  Grieve,  and 
for  a  certain  other  little  fact.  A  middle-aged  woman,  in  a  dowdy 
brown-stuff  dress  and  black  mantle,  had  begun  to  haunt  the 
house.  She  sat  with  Pureell  sometimes  in  the  parlour  down- 
stairs, and  sometimes  he  accompanied  her  out  of  doors.  Mary 
Ann  reported  that  she  was  a  widow,  a  Mrs.  Whymper,  who  be- 
longed to  the  same  chapel  that  Purcell  did,  and  who  was  supposed 
by  those  who  knew  to  have  been  making  up  to  him  for  some  time. 

'And  perhaps  she'll  get  him  after  all,'  said  the  little  ugly 
maid,  with  a  grin.  '  Catch  me  staying  then,  Miss  Dora  !  It's 
bad  enough  as  it  is.' 

On  one  occasion  Dora  came  across  the  widow,  waiting  in  the 


CHAP,  vin  YOUTH  211 

little  sitting-room.  She  was  an  angular  person,  with  a  greyish- 
brown  complexion,  a  prominent  mouth  and  teeth,  and  a  generally 
snappish,  alert  look.  After  a  few  commonplaces,  in  which  Mrs. 
Whymper  was  clearly  condescending,  she  launched  into  a  de- 
nunciation of  Lucy's  ill  behaviour  to  her  father,  which  at  last 
roused  Dora  to  defence.  She  waxed  bold,  and  pointed  out  that 
Lucy  might  have  been  managed  if  her  father  had  been  a  little  more 
patient  with  her,  had  allowed  her  a  few  ordinary  amusements, 
and  had  not  insisted  in  forcing  her  at  once,  fresh  from  school, 
into  ways  and  practices  she  did  not  naturally  like,  while  she  had 
never  been  trained  to  them  by  force  of  habit. 

'  Hoity  toity,  Miss  ! '  said  the  widow,  bridling,  '  young  people 
are  very  uppish  nowadays.  They  never  seem  to  remember  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  the  fifth  commandment.  In  my  young  days 
what  a  father  said  was  law,  and  no  questions  asked ;  and  I've 
seen  many  a  Lancashire  man  take  a  stick  to  his  gcll  for  less  pro- 
vocation than  this  gell's  given  her  feyther  !  I  wonder  at  you, 
Miss  Lomax,  that  I  do,  for  backing  her  up.  But  I'm  afraid  from 
what  I  hear  you've  been  taking  up  with  a  lot  of  Popish  ways.' 

And  the  woman  looked  her  up  and  down  with  an  air  which 
plainly  said  that  she  was  on  her  own  ground  in  that  parlour,  and 
might  say  exactly  what  she  pleased  there. 

1  If  I  have,  I  don't  see  that  it  matters  to  you,'  said  Dora 
quietly,  and  retreated. 

Yes,  certainly,  a  stepmother  looked  likely  !  Lucy  in  her 
bedroom  upstairs  knew  nothing,  and  Dora  decided  to  tell  her 
nothing  till  she  was  stronger.  But  this  new  development  made 
the  child's  future  more  uncertain  than  ever. 

On  the  day  before  her  departure  for  Hastings,  Lucy  came 
out  for  a  short  walk,  by  way  of  hardening  herself  for  the  journey. 
She  walked  round  the  cathedral  and  up  Victoria  Street,  and 
then,  tired  out  with  the  exertion,  she  made  her  way  in  to  Dora, 
to  rest.  Her  face  was  closely  hidden  by  a  thick  Shetland  veil, 
for,  in  addition  to  her  general  pallor  and  emaciation,  her  usually 
clear  and  brilliant  skin  was  roughened  and  blotched  here  and 
there  by  some  effect  of  her  illness  ;  she  could  not  bear  to  look  at 
herself  in  the  glass,  and  shrank  from  meeting  any  of  her  old 
acquaintances.  It  was,  indeed,  curious  to  watch  the  effect  of  the 
temporary  loss  of  beauty  upon  her  ;  her  morbid  impatience  under 
it  showed  at  every  turn.  But  for  it,  Dora  was  convinced  that 
she  must  and  would  have  put  herself  in  David  Grieve's  way 
again  before  leaving  Manchester.  As  it  was,  she  was  still  deter- 
mined not  to  let  him  see  her. 

She  came  in,  much  exhausted,  and  threw  herself  into  Daddy's 
arm-chair  with  groans  of  self-pity.  Did  Dora  think  she  would 
ever  be  strong  again — ever  be  anything  but  an  ugly  fright  ?  It 
was  hard  to  have  all  this  come  upon  you,  just  through  doing  a 
service  to  some  one  who  didn't  care. 

'  Hasn't  he  heard  yet  that  I've  been  ill  ? '  she  inquired  petu- 
lantly. 


212  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

No  ;  Dora  did  not  think  he  had.  Neither  she  nor  Daddy  had 
seen  him.  He  must  have  been  extra  busy.  But  she  would  get 
Daddy  to  ask  him  up  to  supper  directly,  and  tell  him  all  about  it. 

'And  then,  perhaps,'  she  said,  looking  up  with  a  sweet, 
intense  look — how  little  Lucy  was  able  to  decipher  it ! — '  perhaps 
he  may  write  a  letter.' 

Lucy  was  cheered  by  this  suggestion,  and  sat  looking  out  of 
window  for  a  while,  idly  watching  the  passers-by.  But  she 
could  not  let  the  one  topic  that  absorbed  her  mind  alone  for  long, 
and  soon  she  was  once  more  questioning  Dora  in  close  detail 
about  David  Grieve's  sister  and  all  that  he  had  said  about  her. 
For,  by  way  of  obliging  the  child  to  realise  some  of  the  incon- 
venient burdens  and  obligations  which  were  at  that  moment 
banging  round  the  young  bookseller's  neck,  and  making  the 
very  idea  of  matrimony  ridiculous  to  him,  Dora  had  repeated  to 
her  some  of  his  confidences  about  himself  and  Louie.  Lucy  had 
not  taken  them  very  happily.  Everything  that  turned  up  now 
seemed  only  to  push  her  further  out  of  sight  and  make  her  more 
insignificant.  She  was  thirsting,  with  a  woman's  nascent  passion 
and  a  schoolgirl's  vanity,  to  be  the  centre  and  heroine  of  the 
play ;  and  here  she  was  reduced  to  the  smallest  and  meanest  of 
parts — a  part  that  caught  nobody's  eye,  do  what  she  would. 

Suddenly  she  broke  off  what  she  was  saying,  and  called  to 
Dora : 

'  Do  you  see  that  pair  of  people,  Dora  ?  Come — come  at 
once  !  What  an  extraordinary-looking  girl ! ' 

Dora  turned  unwillingly,  being  absorbed  in  a  golden  halo 
which  she  had  set  herself  to  finish  that  day ;  then  she  dropped 
her  needle,  and  pushed  her  stool  back  that  she  might  see  better. 
From  the  cathedral  end  of  Market  Place  an  elderly  grey-haired 
man  and  a  young  girl  were  advancing  along  the  pavement  to- 
wards the  Parlour.  As  they  passed,  the  flower-sellers  at  the 
booths  were  turning  to  look  at  them,  some  persons  in  front  of 
them  were  turning  back,  and  a  certain  number  of  errand-boys 
and  other  loungers  were  keeping  pace  with  them,  observing 
them.  The  man  leant  every  now  and  then  on  a  thick  stick  he 
carried,  and  looked  uncertainly  from  house  to  house.  He  had  a 
worn,  anxious  expression,  and  the  helpless  movements  of  short 
sight.  Whenever  he  stopped  the  girl  moved  on  alone,  and  he 
had  to  hurry  after  her  again  to  catch  her  up.  She,  meanwhile, 
was  perfectly  conscious  that  she  was  being  stared  at,  and  stared 
in  return  with  a  haughty  composure  which  seemed  to  draw  the 
eyes  of  the  passers-by  after  it  like  a  magnet.  She  was  very  tall 
and  slender,  and  her  unusual  height  made  her  garish  dress  the 
more  conspicuous.  The  small  hat  perched  on  her  black  hair  was 
all  bright  scarlet,  both  the  felt  and  the  trimming  ;  under  her 
jacket,  which  was  purposely  thrown  back,  there  was  a  scarlet 
bodice,  and  there  was  a  broad  band  of  scarlet  round  the  edge  of 
her  black  dress. 

Lucy  could  not  take  her  eyes  off  her. 


CHAP,  vni  YOUTH  213 

'  Did  you  ever  see  anybody  so  handsome,  Dora  ?  But  what  a 
fast,  horrid  creature  to  dress  like  that  !  And  just  look  at  her; 
she  won't  wait  for  the  old  man,  though  he's  calling  to  her — she 
goes  on  staring  at  everybody.  They'll  have  a  crowd,  presently  ! 
Why,  they're  coining  here!"1 

For  suddenly  the  girl  stopped  outside  the  doorway  below,  and 
beckoned  imperiously  to  her  companion.  She  said  a  few  sharp 
words  to  him,  and  the  pair  upstairs  felt  the  swing-door  of  the 
restaurant  open  and  shut. 

Lucy,  forgetting  her  weakness,  ran  eagerly  to  the  sitting- 
room  door  and  listened. 

There  was  a  sound  of  raised  voices  below,  and  then  the  door 
at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  opened,  and  Daddy  was  heard  shout- 
ing. 

'  There — go  along  upstairs.  My  daughter,  she'll  speak  to 
you.  And  don't  you  come  back  this  way — a  man  can't  be  feed- 
ing Manchester  and  taking  strangers  about,  all  in  the  same 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  you  know,  not  unless  he  happens  to  have  a 
few  spare  bodies  handy,  which  ain't  precisely  my  case.  My 
daughter  '11  tell  you  what  you  want  to  know,  and  show  you  out 
by  the  private  door.  Dora  ! ' 

Dora  stood  waiting  rather  nervously  at  the  sitting-room  door. 
The  girl  came  up  first,  the  old  man  behind  her,  bewildered  and 
groping  his  way. 

'  We're  strangers  here — we  want  somebody  to  show  us  the 
way.  We've  been  to  the  book-shop  in  Half  Street,  and  they  sent 
us  on  here.  They  were  just  brutes  to  us  at  that  book- shop,' 
said  the  girl,  with  a  vindictive  emphasis  and  an  imperious  self- 
possession  which  fairly  paralysed  Lucy  and  Dora.  Lucy's  eyes, 
moreover,  were  riveted  on  her  face,  on  its  colour,  its  fineness  of 
feature,  its  brilliance  and  piercingness  of  expression.  And  what 
was  the  extraordinary  likeness  in  it  to  something  familiar  ? 

'  Why ! '  said  Dora,  in  a  little  cry,  '  aren't  you  Mr.  David 
Grieve's  sister  ? ' 

For  she  had  traced  the  likeness  before  Lucy.  '  Oh,  it  must 
be!' 

'  Well,  I  am  his  sister,  if  you  want  to  know,'  said  the  stranger, 
looking  astonished  in  her  turn.  '  He  wrote  to  me  to  come  up. 
And  I  lent  the  letter  to  uncle  to  read — that's  his  uncle — and  he 
went  and  lost  it  somehow,  fiddling  about  the  fields  while  I  was 
putting  my  things  together.  And  then  we  couldn't  think  of  the 
proper  address  there  was  in  it — only  the  name  of  a  man  Purcell, 
in  Half  Street,  that  David  said  he'd  been  with  for  two  years.  So 
we  went  there  to  ask ;  and,  my ! — weren't  they  rude  to  us  1 
There  was  an  ugly  black  man  there  chivied  us  out  in  no  time — 
wouldn't  tell  us  anything.  But  as  I  was  shutting  the  door  the 
shopman  whispered  to  me,  "Try  the  Parlour — Market  Place." 
So  we  came  on  here,  you  see.' 

And  she  stared  about  her,  at  the  room,  and  at  the  girls, 
taking  in  everything  with  lightning  rapidity — the  embroidery 


214  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

frame,  Lucy's  veil  and  fashionably  cut  jacket,  the  shabby  furni- 
ture, the  queer  old  pictures. 

'Please  come  in,'  said  Dora  civilly,  '  and  sit  down.  If  you're 
strangers  here,  I'll  just  put  on  my  hat  and  take  you  round.  Mr. 
Grieve's  a  friend  of  ours.  He's  in  Potter  Street.  You'll  find 
him  nicely  settled  by  now.  This  is  my  cousin,  Mr.  Purcell's 
daughter.' 

And  she  ran  upstairs,  leaving  Lucy  to  grapple  with  the 
new-comers. 

The  two  girls  sat  down,  and  eyed  each  other.  Beuben  stood 
patiently  waiting. 

'  Is  the  man  at  Half  Street  your  father  ? '  asked  the  new- 
comer, abruptly. 

'Yes,'  said  Lucy,  conscious  of  the  strangest  mingling  of 
admiration  and  dislike,  as  she  met  the  girl's  wonderful  eyes. 

'  Did  he  and  Davy  fall  out  ? ' 

'  They  didn't  get  on  about  Sundays,'  said  Lucy,  unwillingly, 
glad  of  the  sheltering  veil  which  enabled  her  to  hold  her  own 
against  this  masterful  creature. 

'  Is  your  father  strict  about  chapel  and  that  sort  of  thing  ? ' 

Lucy  nodded.  She  felt  an  ungracious  wish  to  say  as  little  as 
possible. 

David's  sister  laughed. 

'Davy  was  that  way  once — just  for  a  bit — afore  he  ran 
away,  /knew  he  wouldn't  keep  it  on.' 

Then,  with  a  queer  look  over  her  shoulder  at  her  uncle,  she 
relapsed  into  silence.  Her  attention  was  drawn  to  Dora's  frame, 
and  she  moved  up  to  it,  bending  over  it  and  lifting  the  handker- 
chief that  Dora  had  thrown  across  it. 

'You  mustn't  touch  it!'  said  Lucy,  hastily,  provoked,  she 
knew  not  why,  by  every  movement  the  girl  made.  '  It's  very 
particular  work.' 

'  I'm  used  to  fine  things,'  said  the  other,  scornfully.  '  I'm  a 
silk-weaver — that's  my  trade — all  the  best  brocades,  drawing- 
room  trains,  that  style  of  thing.  If  you  didn't  handle  them 
carefully,  you'd  know  it.  Yes,  she's  doing  it  well,'  and  the 
speaker  put  her  head  down  and  examined  the  work  critically. 
'  But  it  must  go  fearful  slow,  compared  to  a  loom.' 

'She  does  it  splendidly,'  said  Lucy,  annoyed;  'she's  getting 
quite  famous  for  it.  That's  going  to  a  great  church  up  in 
London,  and  she's  got  more  orders  than  she  can  take.' 

'  Does  she  get  good  pay  ? '  asked  the  girl  eagerly. 

'  I  don't  know,'  replied  Lucy  shortly. 

'  Because,  if  there's  good  pay,'  said  the  other,  examining  the 
work  again  closely,  '  I'd  soon  learn  it — why  I'd  learn  it  in  a 
week,  you  see  !  If  I  stay  here  I  shan't  get  no  more  silk-weav- 
ing. And  of  course  I'll  stay.  I'm  just  sick  of  the  country.  I'd 
have  come  up  long  ago  if  I'd  known  where  to  find  Davy.' 

4  I'm  ready,'  said  Dora  in  a  constrained  voice  beside  her. 
Louie  Grieve  looked  up  at  her. 


CHAP,  vin  YOUTH  215 

'  Oh,  you  needn't  look  so  glum  ! — I  haven't  hurt  it.  I'm  used 
to  good  things,  stuffs  at  two  guineas  a  yard,  and  the  like  of  that. 
What  money  do  you  take  a  week  ? '  and  she  pointed  to  the  frame. 

Something  in  the  tone  and  manner  made  the  question  specially 
offensive.  Dora  pretended  not  to  hear  it. 

'  Shall  we  go  now  ? '  she  said,  hurriedly  covering  her  precious 
work  up  from  those  sacrilegious  fingers  and  putting  it  away. 
'  Lucy,  you  ought  to  be  going  home.' 

'  Well,  I  will  directly,'  said  Lucy.  '  Don't  you  bother  about 
me.' 

They  all  went  downstairs.  Lucy  put  up  her  veil,  and  pressed 
her  face  against  the  window,  watching  for  them.  As  she  saw 
them  cross  Market  Street,  she  was  seized  with  hungry  longing. 
She  wanted  to  be  going  with  them,  to  talk  to  him  herself — to  let 
him  see  what  she  had  gone  through  for  him.  It  would  be 
months  and  months,  perhaps,  before  they  met  again.  And  Dora 
would  see  him — his  horrid  sister — everyone  but  she.  He  would 
forget  all  about  her,  and  she  would  be  dull  and  wretched  at 
Hastings. 

But  as  she  turned  away  in  her  restless  pain,  she  caught  sight 
of  her  changed  face  in  the  cracked  looking-glass  over  the  mantel- 
piece. Her  white  lips  tightened.  She  drew  down  her  veil,  and 
went  home. 

Meanwhile  Dora  led  the  way  to  Potter  Street.  Louie  took 
little  notice  of  any  attempts  to  talk  to  her.  She  was  wholly 
engaged  in  looking  about  her  and  at  the  shops.  Especially  was 
she  attracted  by  the  drapers'  windows  in  St.  Ann's  Square, 
pronouncing  her  opinion  loudly  and  freely  as  to  their  contents. 

Dora  fell  meditating.  Young  Grieve  would  have  his  work 
cut  out  for  him,  she  thought,  if  this  extraordinary  sister  were 
really  going  to  settle  with  him.  She  was  very  like  him — 
strangely  like  him.  And  yet  in  the  one  face  there  was  a  quality 
which  was  completely  lacking  in  the  other,  and  which  seemed  to 
make  all  the  difference.  Dora  tried  to  explain  what  she  meant 
to  herself,  and  failed. 

'Here's  Potter  Street,'  she  said,  as  they  turned  into  it. 
'  And  that's  his  shop — that  one  with  the  stall  outside.  Oh, 
there  he  is  ! ' 

David  was  in  fact  standing  on  his  step  talking  to  a  customer 
who  was  turning  over  the  books  outside. 

Louie  looked  at  him.  Then  she  began  to  run.  Old  Grieve 
too,  crimson  all  over,  and  evidently  much  excited,  hurried  on. 
Dora  fell  behind,  her  quick  sympathies  rising. 

'They  won't  want  me  interfering,'  she  said,  turning  round. 
'  I'll  just  go  back  to  my  work.' 

Meanwhile,  in  David's  little  back  room,  which  he  had  already 
swept  and  garnished — for  after  his  letter  of  the  night  before,  he 
had  somehow  expected  Louie  to  rush  upon  him  by  the  earliest 


216  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

possible  train — the  meeting  of  these  long-sundered  persons  took 
place. 

David  saw  Keuben  come  in  with  amazement. 

'  Why,  Uncle  Keuben  !  Well,  I'm  real  glad  to  see  you.  I 
didn't  think  you'd  have  been  able  to  leave  the  farm.  Well,  this 
is  my  bit  of  a  place,  you  see.  What  do  you  think  of  it  ? ' 

And,  holding  his  sister  by  the  hand,  the  young  fellow  looked 
joyously  at  his  uncle,  pride  in  his  new  possessions  and  the 
recollection  of  his  destitute  childhood  rushing  upon  him 
together  as  he  spoke. 

'Aye,  it's  a  fine  beginning  yo've  made,  Davy,'  said  the  old 
man,  cautiously  looking  round,  first  at  the  little  room,  with  its 
neat  bits  of  new  furniture  in  Louie's  honour,  and  then  through 
the  glass  door  at  the  shop,  which  was  now  heavily  lined  with 
books.  '  Yo  wor  allus  a  cliver  lad,  Davy.  A'  think  a'll  sit  down.' 

And  Keuben,  subsiding  into  a  chair,  fell  forthwith  into  an 
abstraction,  his  old  knotted  hands  trembling  a  little  on  his  knees. 

Meanwhile  David  was  holding  Louie  at  arm's-length  to  look 
at  her.  He  had  kissed  her  heartily  when  she  came  in  first,  and 
now  he  was  all  pleasure  and  excitement. 

'  'Pon  my  word,  Louie,  you've  grown  as  high  as  the  roof ! 
I  say,  Louie,  what's  become  of  that  smart  pink  dress  you  wore 
at  last  "wake,"  and  of  that  overlooker,  with  the  moustaches, 
from  New  Mills,  you  walked  about  with  all  day  ? ' 

She  stared  at  him  open-mouthed. 

'  What  do  you  mean  by  that  ? '  she  said,  quickly. 

David  laughed  out. 

'And  who  was  it  gave  Jim  Wigson  a  box  on  the  ears  last 
fifth  of  November,  in  the  lane  just  by  the  Dye-works,  eh,  Miss 
Louie  ? — and  danced  with  young  Redway  at  the  Upper  Mill 
dance,  New  Year's  Day  ? — and  had  words  with  Mr.  James  at  the 
office  about  her  last  "  cut,"  a  fortnight  ago — eh,  Louie  ? ' 

'What  ever  do  you  mean  ?'  she  said,  half  crossly,  her  colour 
rising.  '  You've  been  spying  on  me.' 

She  hated  to  be  mystified.  It  made  her  feel  herself  in  some 
one  else's  power ;  and  the  wild  creature  in  her  blood  grew 
restive. 

'  Why,  I've  known  all  about  you  these  four  years ! '  the  lad 
began,  with  dancing  eyes.  Then  suddenly  his  voice  changed, 
and  dropped  :  '  I  say,  look  at  Uncle  Reuben  ! ' 

For  Reuben  sat  bent  forward,  his  light  blurred  eyes  looking 
out  straight  before  him,  with  a  singular  yet  blind  intentness, 
as  though,  while  seeing  nothing  round  about  him,  they  passed 
beyond  the  walls  of  the  little  room  to  some  vision  of  their  own. 

'I  don't  know  whatever  he  came  for,'  began  Louie,  as  they 
both  examined  him. 

'Uncle  Reuben,'  said  David,  going  up  to  him  and  touching 
him  on  the  shoulder,  '  you  look  tired.  You'll  be  wanting  some 
dinner.  I'll  just  send  my  man,  John  Dalby,  round  th<?  corner 
for  something.' 


CHAP,  vin  YOUTH  217 

And  he  made  a  step  towards  the  door,  but  Reuben  raised  his 
hand. 

'  Noa,  noa,  Davy  !    Shut  that  door,  wiltha  ? ' 

David  wondered,  and  shut  it. 

Then  Reuben  gave  a  long  sigh,  and  put  his  hand  deep  into 
his  coat  pocket,  with  the  quavering,  uncertain  movement  cha- 
racteristic of  him. 

'  Davy,  my  lad,  a've  got  summat  to  say  to  tha.' 

And  with  many  hitches,  while  the  others  watched  him  in 
astonishment,  he  pulled  out  of  his  pocket  a  canvas  bag  and  put 
it  down  on  an  oak  stool  in  front  of  him.  Then  he  undid  the 
string  of  it  with  his  large  awkward  fingers,  and  pushed  the  stool 
across  to  David. 

'  Theer's  sixty  pund  theer,  Davy — sixty  pund  !  Yo  can 
keawnt  it — it's  aw  reet.  A've  saved  it  for  yo,  this  four  year — 
four  year  coom  lasst  Michaelmas  Day.  Hannah  nor  nobory 
knew  owt  abeawt  it.  But  it's  yourn — it's  yor  share,  being  t' 
half  o'  Mr.  Gurney's  money.  Louie's  share — that  wor  different ; 
we  had  a  reet  to  that,  she  bein  a  growin  girl,  and  doin  nowt 
mich  for  her  vittles.  Fro  the  time  when  yo  should  ha  had  it — 
whether  for  wages  or  for  'prenticin — an  yo  couldna  ha  it,  because 
Hannah  had  set  hersen  agen  it, — a  saved  it  for  tha,  owt  o'  t' 
summer  cattle  moastly,  without  tellin  nobory,  so  as  not  to  mak 
words.' 

David,  bewildered,  had  taken  the  bag  into  his  hand.  Louie's 
eyes  were  almost  out  of  her  head  with  curiosity  and  amazement. 
'  Mr.  Gurneifs  money  !  '  What  did  he  mean  ?  It  was  all  double- 
Dutch  to  them. 

David,  with  an  effort,  controlled  himself,  being  now  a  man 
and  a  householder.  He  stood  with  his  back  against  the  shop 
door,  his  gaze  fixed  on  Reuben. 

'  Now,  Uncle  Reuben,  I  don't  understand  a  bit  of  what  you've 
been  saying,  and  Louie  don't  either.  Who's  Mr.  Gurney  ?  and 
what's  his  money  ?' 

Unconsciously  the  young  man's  voice  took  a  sharp,  magisterial 
note.  Reuben  gave  another  long  sigh.  He  was  now  leaning  on 
his  stick,  staving  at  the  floor. 

'  Noa, — a'  know  yo  doan't  understan  ;  a've  got  to  tell  tha — 
'at's  t'  worst  part  on  't.  An  I'm  soa  bad  at  tellin.  Do  yo  mind 
when  yor  feyther  deed,  Davy  ?'  he  said  suddenly,  looking  up. 

David  nodded, — a  red  flush  of  presentiment  spread  itself  over 
his  face — his  whole  being  hung  on  Reuben's  words. 

'  He  sent  for  me  afore  he  deed,'  continued  Reuben,  slowly  ; 
'  an  he  towd  me  aw  about  his  affairs.  Six  hunderd  pund  he'd 
got  saved — six-hunderd-pund  !  Aye,  it  wor  a  lot  for  a  yoong 
mon  like  him,  and  after  sich  a  peck  o'  troobles  !  And  he  towd 
me  Mr.  Gurney  ud  pay  us  th'  interest  for  yor  bringin-up— th'  two 
on  yo  ;  an  whan  yo  got  big,  Davy,  I  wor  to  tak  keawnsel  wi  Mr. 
Gurney,  an,  if  yo  chose  for  t'  land,  yo  were  to  ha  yor  money  for 
a  farm,  when  yo  wor  big  eneuf,  an  if  yo  turned  agen  th'  land,  yo 


218  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  il 

wor  to  be  'prenticed  to  soom  trade,  an  ha  yor  money  when  yo 
wanted  it, — Mr.  Gurney  bein  willin.  An  I  promised  him  I'd 
deal  honest  wi  his  childer,  an — ' 

Reuben  paused  painfully.  He  was  wrestling  with  his  con- 
science, and  groping  for  words  about  his  wife.  The  brother  and 
sister  sat  open-mouthed,  pale  with  excitement,  afraid  of  losing 
a  single  syllable. 

'  An  takkin  it  awthegither,'  he  said,  bringing  each  word  out 
with  an  effort,  '  I  doan't  think,  by  t'  Lord's  mercy,  as  I've  gone 
soa  mich  astray,  though  I  ha  been  mich  troobled  this  four  year 
wi  thowts  o'  Sandy — my  brither  Sandy — an  wi  not  knowin  wheer 
yo  wor  gone,  Davy.  Bit  yo  seem  coom  to  an  honest  trade — an 
Louie  theer  ha  larnt  a  trade  too, — an  addle't  a  bit  money, — an 
she's  a  fine-grown  lass — ' 

He  turned  a  slow,  searching  look  upon  her,  as  though  he  were 
pleading  a  cause  before  some  unseen  judge. 

'  An  theer's  yor  money,  Davy.  It's  aw  th'  same,  a'm  thinkin, 
whether  yo  get  it  fro  me  or  fro  Mr.  Gurney.  An  here — 

He  rose,  and  unbuttoning  his  inner  coat,  fumbled  in  the 
pocket  of  it  till  he  found  a  letter. 

'An  here  is  a  letter  for  Mr.  Gurney.  If  yo  gie  me  a  pen, 
Davy,  I'll  write  in  to  't  yor  reet  address,  an  put  it  in  t'  post  as  I  goo 
to  t'  station.  I  took  noatice  of  a  box  as  I  coom  along.  An  then — ' 

He  stood  still  a  moment  pondering,  one  outspread  hand  on 
the  letter. 

'  An  then  theer's  nowt  moor  as  a  can  remember, — an  your 
aunt  ull  be  wearyin ;  an  it's  but  reet  she  should  know  now,  at 
wonst,  abeawt  t'  money  a've  saved  this  four  year,  an  t'  letter  to 
Mr.  Gurney.  Yo  understan — when  yor  letter  came  this  mornin — 
t'  mon  browt  it  up  to  Louie  abeawt  eight  o'clock — she  towd  me 
fust  out  i'  th'  yard — an  I  said  to  her,  "  Doan't  you  tell  yor  aunt 
nowt  abeawt  it,  an  we'st  meet  at  t'  station."  An  I  made  soom 
excuse  to  Hannah  abeawt  gooin  ower  t'  Scout  after  soom  beeasts 
— an — an — Louie  an  me  coom  thegither.' 

He  passed  his  other  hand  painfully  across  his  brow.  The 
travail  of  expression,  the  moral  struggle  of  the  last  twenty-four 
hours,  seemed  to  have  aged  him  before  them. 

David  sat  looking  at  him  in  a  stupefied  silence.  A  light  was 
breaking  in  upon  him,  transfiguring,  combining,  interpreting  a 
hundred  scattered  remembrances  of  his  boyhood.  But  Louie,  the 
instant  her  uncle  stopped,  broke  into  a  string  of  questions,  shrill 
and  breathless,  her  face  quite  white,  her  eyes  glittering.  Reuben 
seemed  hardly  to  hear  her,  and  in  the  middle  of  them  David  said 
sharply, 

'  Stop  that,  Louie,  and  let  me  talk  to  Uncle  Reuben  ! ' 

He  drew  the  letter  from  under  Reuben's  fingers,  and  went  on, 
steadily  looking  up  into  his  uncle's  face  : 

'  You'll  let  me  read  it,  uncle,  and  I'll  get  you  a  pen  directly  to 
put  in  the  address.  But  first  will  you  tell  us  about  father  ?  You 
never  did — you  nor  Aunt  Hannah.  And  about  mother,  too  ? ' 


CHAP,  viii  YOUTH  219 

He  said  the  last  words  with  difficulty,  having  all  his  life  been 
pricked  by  a  certain  instinct  about  his  mother,  which  had,  how- 
ever, almost  nothing  definite  to  work  upon.  Reuben  thought  a 
minute,  then  sat  down  again  patiently. 

'  Aye,  a'll  tell  tha.  Theer's  nobory  else  can.  An  tha  ought 
to  know,  though  it'll  mebbe  be  a  shock  to  tha.' 

And,  with  his  head  resting  against  his  stick,  he  began  to  tell 
the  story  of  his  brother  and  his  brother's  marriage  as  he  remem- 
bered it. 

First  came  the  account  of  Sandy's  early  struggles,  as  Sandy 
himself  had  described  them  on  that  visit  which  he  had  paid  to 
the  farm  in  the  first  days  of  his  prosperity  ;  then  a  picture  of  his 
ultimate  success  in  business,  as  it  had  appeared  to  the  dull  elder 
brother  dazzled  by  the  younger  1s  '  cliverness. ' 

'  Aye,  he  might  ha  been  a  great  mon  ;  he  might  ha  coom  to 
varra  high  things,  might  Sandy,'  said  Reuben  solemnly,  his  voice 
suddenly  rising,  '  bit  for  th'  hizzy  that  ruined  him  ! ' 

Both  his  hearers  made  an  involuntary  movement.  But  Reu- 
ben had  now  lost  all  count  of  them.  He  was  intent  on  one  thing, 
and  capable  only  of  one  thing.  They  had  asked  him  for  his 
story,  and  he  was  telling  it,  with  an  immense  effort  of  mind, 
recovering  the  past  as  best  he  could,  and  feeling  some  of  it  over 
again  intensely. 

So  when  he  came  to  the  marriage,  he  told  the  story  like  one 
thinking  it  out  to  himself,  with  an  appalling  plainness  of  phrase. 
It  was,  of  course,  impossible  for  him  to  explain  Sandy's  aberra- 
tion— there  were  no  resources  in  him  equal  to  the  task.  Louise 
Suveret  became  in  his  account  what  she  had  always  remained  in 
his  imagination  since  Sandy's  employers  told  him  what  was  known 
of  her  story — a  mere  witch  and  devil,  sent  for  his  brother's  per- 
dition. All  his  resentment  against  his  brother's  fate  had  passed 
into  his  hatred  of  this  creature  whom  he  had  never  seen.  Nay, 
he  even  held  up  the  picture  of  her  hideous  death  before  her 
children  with  a  kind  of  sinister  triumph.  So  let  the  ungodly  and 
the  harlot  perish  ! 

David  stood  opposite  to  the  speaker  all  the  while,  motionless, 
save  for  an  uneasy  movement  here  and  there  when  Reuben's 
words  grew  more  scripturally  frank  than  usual.  Louie's  face 
was  much  more  positive  than  David's  in  what  it  said.  Reuben 
and  Reuben's  vehemence  annoyed  and  angered  her.  She 
frowned  at  him  from  under  her  black  brows.  It  was  evident 
that  he,  rather  than  his  story,  excited  her. 

'  An  we  buried  him  aw  reet  an  proper,'  said  Reuben  at  last, 
wiping  his  brow,  damp  with  this  unwonted  labour  of  brain  and 
tongue.  '  Mr.  Gurney  he  would  ha  it  aw  done  handsome  ;  and 
we  put  him  in  a  corner  o'  Kensal  Green,  just  as  close  as  might  be 
to  whar  they'd  put  her  after  th'  crowner  had  sat  on  her.  Yor 
feyther  had  left  word,  an  Mr.  Gurney  would  ha  nowt  different. 
But  it  went  ageu  me — aye,  it  did — to  leave  him  wi  her  after 
aw  !' 


220  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

And  falling  suddenly  silent,  Reuben  sat  wrapped  in  a  sombre 
mist  of  memory. 

Then  Louie  broke  out,  rolling  and  unrolling  the  ribbons  of  her 
hat  in  hot  fingers. 

'  I  don't  believe  half  on't — I  don't  see  how  you  could  know — 
nor  Mr.  Gurney  either.' 

Reuben  looked  round  bewildered.  Louie  got  up  noisily,  went 
to  the  window  and  threw  it  open,  as  though  oppressed  by  the 
narrowness  of  the  room. 

'  No,  I  don't,'  she  repeated,  defiantly — '  I  don't  believe  the 
half  on't.  But  I'll  find  out  some  day.' 

She  leaned  her  elbows  on  the  sill,  and,  looking  out  into  the 
squalid  bit  of  yard,  threw  a  bit  of  grit  that  lay  on  the  window  at 
a  cat  that  sat  sleepily  blinking  on  the  flags  outside. 

Reuben  rose  heavily. 

'  Gie  me  pen  and  ink,  Davy,  an  let  me  go.' 

The  young  man  brought  it  him  without  a  word.  Reuben  put 
in  the  address. 

'  Ha  yo  read  it,  Davy  ? ' 

David  started.     In  his  absorption  he  had  forgotten  to  read  it. 

'I  wor  forced  to  write  it  i'  the  top  sheepfold,'  Reuben  began 
to  explain  apologetically,  then  stopped  suddenly.  Several  times 
he  had  been  on  the  point  of  bringing  Hannah  into  the  conversa- 
tion, and  had  always  refrained.  He  refrained  now.  David  read 
it.  It  was  written  in  Reuben's  most  laborious  business  style,  and 
merely  requested  that  Mr.  Gurney  would  now  communicate  with 
Sandy's  son  direct  on  the  subject  of  his  father's  money.  He  had 
left  Needham  Farm,  and  was  old  enough  to  take  counsel  himself 
with  Mr.  Gurney  in  future  as  to  what  should  be  done  with  it. 

Reuben  looked  over  David's  shoulder  as  he  read. 

'  An  Louie  ? '  he  said  uncertainly,  at  the  end,  jerking  his 
thumb  towards  her. 

'  I'm  stayin  here, '  said  Louie  peremptorily,  still  looking  out  of 
window. 

Reuben  said  nothing.  Perhaps  a  shade  of  relief  lightened  his 
old  face. 

When  the  letter  was  handed  back  to  him,  he  sealed  it  and  put 
it  into  his  pocket,  buttoning  up  his  coat  for  departure. 

'  Yo  wor  talkin  abeawt  dinner,  Davy — or  summat,'  said  the 
old  man,  courteously.  'Thankee  kindly.  I  want  for  nowt.  I 
mun  get  home — I  mun  get  home.' 

Louie,  standing  absorbed  in  her  own  excited  thoughts,  could 
hardly  be  disturbed  to  say  good-bye  to  him.  David,  still  in  a 
dream,  led  him  through  the  shop,  where  Reuben  peered  about 
him  with  a  certain  momentary  curiosity. 

But  at  the  door  he  said  good-bye  in  a  great  hurry  and  ran 
down  the  steps,  evidently  impatient  to  be  rid  of  his  nephew. 

David  turned  and  came  slowly  back  through  the  little  piled- 
up  shop,  where  John,  all  eyes  and  ears,  sat  on  a  high  stool  in  the 
corner,  into  the  living  room. 


CHAP,  vni  YOUTH  221 

As  he  entered  it  Louie  sprang  upon  him,  and  seizing  him  with 
both  hands,  danced  him  madly  round  the  little  space  of  vacant 
boards,  till  she  tripped  her  foot  over  the  oak  stool,  and  sank 
down  on  a  chair,  laughing  wildly. 

'  How  much  of  that  money  am  I  going  to  have  ? '  she  demanded 
suddenly,  her  arms  crossed  over  her  breast,  her  eyes  brilliant, 
her  whole  aspect  radiant  and  exulting. 

David  was  standing  over  the  fire,  looking  down  into  it,  and 
made  no  answer.  He  had  disengaged  himself  from  her  as  soon 
as  he  could. 

Louie  waited  a  while  ;  then,  with  a  contemptuous  lip  and  a 
shrug  of  the  shoulders,  she  got  up. 

'  What's  the  good  of  worriting  about  things,  I'd  like  to  know  ? 
You  won't  do  'em  no  good.  Why  don't  you  think  about  the 
money  ?  My  word,  won't  Aunt  Hannah  be  mad  !  How  am  I  to 
get  my  parcels  from  the  station,  and  where  am  I  to  sleep  ? ' 

'  You  can  go  and  see  the  house,'  said  David,  shortly.  '  The 
lodgers  upstairs  are  out,  and  there's  the  key  of  the  attic.' 

He  threw  it  to  her,  and  she  ran  off.  He  had  meant  to  take 
her  in  triumphal  progress  through  the  little  house,  and  show 
her  all  the  changes  he  had  been  making  for  her  benefit  and  his 
own.  But  a  gulf  had  yawned  between  them.  He  was  relieved 
to  see  her  go,  and  when  he  was  left  alone  he  laid  his  arms  on 
the  low  mantelpiece  and  hid  his  face  upon  them.  His  mother's 
story,  his  father's  fate,  seemed  to  be  burning  into  his  heart. 

Reuben  hurried  home  through  the  bleak  March  evening.  In 
the  train  he  could  not  keep  himself  still,  fidgeting  so  much  that 
his  neighbours  eyed  him  with  suspicion,  and  gave  him  a  wide 
berth.  As  he  started  to  walk  up  to  Kinder  a  thin,  raw  sleet 
came  on.  It  drove  in  his  face,  chilling  him  through  and  through, 
as  he  climbed  the  lonely  road,  where  the  black  moorland  farms 
lay  all  about  him,  seen  dimly  through  the  white  and  drifting 
veil  of  the  storm.  But  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  external. 
His  mind  was  absorbed  by  the  thought  of  his  meeting  with 
Hannah,  and  by  the  excited  feeling  that  one  of  the  crises  of  his 
timid  and  patient  life  was  approaching.  During  the  last  four 
years  they  had  been  very  poor,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Gurney's  half- 
yearly  cheque,  partly  because  of  the  determination  with  which 
he  had  stuck  to  his  secret  saving.  Hannah  would  think  they 
were  going  now  to  be  poorer  still,  but  he  meant  to  prove  to  her 
that  what  with  Louie's  departure  and  the  restoration  of  their 
whole  income  to  its  natural  channels,  there  would  not  be  so 
much  difference.  He  conned  his  figures  eagerly,  rehearsing 
what  he  would  say.  For  the  rest  he  walked  lightly  and  briskly. 
The  burden  of  his  brother's  children  had  dropped  away  from 
him,  and  in  those  strange  inner  colloquies  of  his  he  could  look 
Sandy  in  the  face  again. 

Had  Hannah  discovered  his  flight,  he  wondered  ?  Some  one. 
he  was  afraid,  might  have  seen  him  and  Louie  at  the  station  and 


222  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  u 

told  tales.  He  was  not  sure  that  one  of  the  Wigsons  had  not 
been  hanging  about  the  station  yard.  And  that  letter  of  David's 
to  Louie,  which  in  his  clumsy  blundering  way  he  had  dropped 
somewhere  about  the  farm  buildings  or  the  house,  and  had  not 
been  able  to  find  again  !  It  gave  him  a  cold  sweat  to  think  that 
in  his  absence  Hannah  might  have  come  upon  it  and  drawn  her 
own  conclusions.  As  he  followed  out  this  possibility  in  his  mind, 
his  step  quickened  till  it  became  almost  a  run. 

Aye,  and  Hannah  had  been  ailing  of  late — there  had  been 
often  'summat  wrang  wi  her.'  Well,  they  were  both  getting 
into  years.  Perhaps  now  that  Louie  with  her  sharp  tongue  and 
aggravating  ways  was  gone,  now  that  there  was  only  him  to  do 
for,  Hannah  would  take  things  easier. 

He  opened  the  gate  into  the  farmyard  and  walked  up  to  the 
house  door  with  a  beating  heart.  It  struck  him  as  strange  that 
the  front  blinds  were  not  drawn,  for  it  was  nearly  dark  and  the 
storm  beat  against  the  windows.  There  was  a  glimmer  of  fire 
in  the  room,  but  he  could  see  nothing  clearly.  He  turned  the 
handle  and  went  into  the  passage,  making  a  clatter  on  purpose. 
But  nothing  stirred  in  the  house,  and  he  pushed  open  the  kitchen 
door,  which  stood  ajar,  filled  with  a  vague  alarm. 

Hannah  was  sitting  in  the  rocking-chair,  by  the  fire.  Beside 
her  was  the  table  partly  spread  with  tea,  which,  however,  had 
been  untouched.  At  Reuben's  entrance  she  turned  her  head 
and  looked  at  him  fixedly.  In  the  dim  light — a  mixture  of  the 
dying  fire  and  of  the  moonlight  from  outside — he  could  not  see 
her  plainly,  but  he  felt  that  there  was  something  strange,  and  he 
ran  forward  to  her. 

'  Hannah,  are  yo  bad  ? — is  there  owt  wrang  wi  yo  ?' 

Then  his  seeking  eye  made  out  a  crumpled  paper  in  her  left 
hand,  and  he  knew  at  once  that  it  must  be  Davy's  letter. 

Before  he  could  speak  again  she  gave  him  a  push  backward 
with  her  free  hand,  and  said  with  an  effort : 

'  Where's  t'  gell  ? ' 

'  Louie  ?   She's  left  i'  Manchester.   A've  found  Davy,  Hannah.' 

There  was  a  pause,  after  which  he  said,  trembling  : 

'Shall  I  get  yo  suinmat,  Hannah  ? ' 

A  hoarse  voice  came  out  of  the  dark  : 

'  Ha  doon  wi  yo  !  Yo  ha  been  leein  to  me.  Yo  wor  seen  at 
t'  station.' 

Reuben  sat  down. 

'Hannah,'  he  said,  'yo  mun  just  listen  to  me.' 

And  taking  his  courage  in  both  hands,  he  told  everything 
without  a  break  :  how  he  had  been  '  feeart '  of  what  Sandy  might 
say  to  him  'at  th'  joodgment,'  how  he  had  saved  and  lied,  and 
how  now  he  had  seen  David,  had  written  to  Mr.  Gurney,  and 
stopped  the  cheques  for  good  and  all. 

When  he  came  to  the  letter  to  Mr.  Gurney,  Hannah  sat 
suddenly  upright  in  her  chair,  grasping  one  arm  of  it. 

'It  shall  mak  noa  difference  to  tha,  a  tell  tha,'  he  cried 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  223 

hastily,  putting  up  his  hand,  fearing  he  knew  not  what,  '  nobbut 
a  few  shillins  ony  way.    I'll  work  for  tha  an  mak  it  up.' 

She  made  a  "sound  which  turned  him  cold  with  terror — a 
sound  of  baffled  weakness,  pain,  vindictive  passion  all  in  one — 
then  she  fell  helplessly  to  one  side  in  her  chair,  and  her  grey 
head  dropped  on  her  shoulder. 

In  another  moment  he  was  crying  madly  for  help  in  the  road 
outside.  For  long  there  was  no  answer — only  the  distant  roar 
of  the  Downfall  and  the  sweep  of  the  wind.  Then  a  labourer, 
on  the  path  leading  to  the  Wigsons'  farm,  heard  and  ran  up. 

An  hour  later  a  doctor  had  been  got  hold  of,  and  Hannah 
was  lying  upstairs,  tended  by  Mrs.  Wigson  and  Reuben. 

'A  paralytic  seizure,'  said  the  doctor  to  Reuben.  'This 
woman  says  she's  been  failing  for  sqme  time  past.  She's  lived 
and  worked  hard,  Mr.  Grieve  ;  you  know  that.  And  there's  been 
some  shock.' 

Reuben  explained  incoherently.  The  doctor  did  not  under- 
stand, and  did  not  care,  being  a  dull  man  and  comparatively  new 
to  the  place.  He  did  what  he  could,  said  she  would  recover — oh, 
yes,  she  would  recover  ;  but,  of  course,  she  could  never  be  the 
same  woman  again.  Her  working  days  were  done. 

A  servant  came  over  from  Wigsons'  to  sit  up  with  Reuben, 
Mrs.  Wigson  being  too  delicate  to  undertake  it.  The  girl  went 
to  lie  down  first  for  an  hour  or  two  in  the  room  across  the  land- 
ing, and  he  was  left  alone  in  the  gaunt  room  with  his  wife.  Poor 
quailing  soul !  As  he  sat  there  in  the  windy  darkness,  hour  after 
hour,  open-mouthed  and  open-eyed,  he  was  steeped  in  terror — 
terror  of  the  future,  of  its  forlornness,  of  his  own  feebleness,  of 
death.  His  heart  clave  piteously  to  the  unconscious  woman 
beside  him,  for  he  had  nothing  else.  It  seemed  to  him  that  the  • 
Lord  had  indeed  dealt  hardly  with  him,  thus  to  strike  him  down 
on  the  day  of  his  great  atonement  1 


CHAPTER   IX 

No  news  of  the  catastrophe  at  Needham  Farm  reached  the  brother 
and  sister  in  Potter  Street.  The  use  of  the  pen  had  always  been 
to  Reuben  one  of  the  main  torments  and  mysteries  of  life,  and  he 
had  besides  all  those  primitive  instincts  of  silence  and  conceal- 
ment which  so  often  in  the  peasant  nature  accompany  misfortune. 
His  brain-power,  moreover,  was  absorbed  by  his  own  calamity 
and  by  the  changes  in  the  routine  of  daily  life  which  his  wife's 
state  brought  upon  him,  so  that  immediately  after  his  great  effort 
of  reparation  towards  them — an  effort  whicli  had  taxed  tho  whole 
man  physically  and  mentally — his  brother's  children  and  their 
affairs  passed  for  a  while  strangely  and  completely  from  his 
troubled  mind. 

Meanwhile,  what  a  transformation  he  had  wrought  in  their 
fortunes  !     When  the  shock  of  his  parents'  story  had  subsided  in 


234  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

him,  and  that  other  shock  of  jarring  temperaments,  which  the 
first  hour  of  Louie's  companionship  had  brought  with  it,  had  been 
for  the  time  forgotten  again  in  the  stress  of  plans  and  practical 
detail,  David  felt  to  the  full  the  exhilaration  of  his  new  prospects. 
He  had  sprung  at  a  leap,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  from  the  condition 
of  the  boy-adventurer  to  that  of  the  man  of  affairs.  And  as  he 
looked  back  upon  their  childhood  and  realised  that  all  the  time, 
instead  of  being  destitute  and  dependent  orphans,  they  and  their 
money  had  really  been  the  mainstay  of  Hannah  and  the  farm,  the 
lad  seemed  to  cast  from  him  the  long  humiliation  of  years,  to  rise 
in  stature  and  dignity.  That  old  skinflint  and  hypocrite,  Aunt 
Hannah  !  With  the  usual  imperfect  sympathy  of  the  young  he 
did  not  much  realise  Reuben's  struggle.  But  he  bore  his  uncle 
no  grudge  for  these  years'  delay.  The  contrivances  and  hard- 
ships of  his  Manchester  life  had  been,  after  all,  enjoyment. 
Without  them  and  the  extravagant  self-reliance  they  had  de- 
veloped in  him  his  pride  and  ambition  would  have  run  less  high. 
And  at  this  moment  the  nerve  and  savour  of  existence  came  to 
him  from  pride  and  from  ambition. 

But  first  of  all  he  had  to  get  his  money.  As  soon  as  Mr. 
Gurney's  answer  to  Reuben's  letter  came,  David  took  train  for 
London,  made  his  way  to  the  great  West-End  shop  which  had 
employed  his  father,  and  saw  the  partner  who  had  taken  charge 
of  Sandy's  money  for  so  long.  Mr.  Gurney,  a  shrewd  and 
pompous  person,  was  interested  in  seeing  Grieve's  son,  inquired 
what  he  was  about,  ran  over  the  terms  of  a  letter  to  himself, 
which  he  took  out  of  a  drawer,  and  then,  with  a  little  flourish  as 
to  his  own  deserts  in  the  matter  of  the  guardianship  of  the  money 
— a  flourish  neither  unnatural  nor  unkindly — handed  over  to  the 
lad  both  the  letter  and  a  cheque  on  a  London  bank,  took  his 
receipt,  talked  a  little,  but  with  a  blunted  memory,  about  the 
lad's  father,  gave  him  a  little  general  business  advice,  asked 
whether  his  sister  was  still  alive,  and  bade  him  good  morning. 
Both  were  satisfied,  and  the  young  man  left  the  office  with  the 
cheque  lying  warm  in  his  pocket,  looking  slowly  and  curiously 
round  the  shop  where  his  father  had  earned  it,  as  he  walked 
away. 

Outside  he  found  himself  close  to  Trafalgar  Square,  and, 
striking  down  to  the  river,  he  went  to  sit  on  the  Embankment 
and  ponder  the  enclosures  which  Mr.  Gurney  had  given  him. 
First  he  took  out  the  cheque,  with  infinite  care,  lest  the  breeze  on 
the  Embankment  should  blow  it  out  of  his  hand,  and  spread  it  on 
his  knee.  600Z.  !  As  he  stared  at  each  letter  and  flourish  his 
eyes  widened  anew  ;  and  when  he  looked  up  across  the  grey  and 
misty  river,  the  figures  still  danced  before  him,  and  in  his 
exultation  he  could  have  shouted  the  news  to  the  passers-by. 
Then,  when  the  precious  paper  had  been  safely  stowed  away 
again,  he  hesitatingly  took  out  the  other — his  father's  dying 
memorandum  on  the  subject  of  his  children,  so  he  had  under- 
stood Mr.  Gurney.  It  was  old  and  brown  ;  it  had  been  written 


CHAP.  IX  YOUTH  235 

with  anguish,  and  it  could  only  be  deciphered  with  difficulty. 
There  had  been  no  will  properly  so  called.  Sandy  had  placed 
more  confidence  in  '  the  firm '  than  in  the  law,  and  had  left 
behind  him  merely  the  general  indication  of  his  wishes  in  the 
hands  of  the  partner  who  had  specially  befriended  him.  The 
provisions  of  it  were  as  Sandy  had  described  them  to  Reuben  on 
his  death-bed.  Especially  did  the  father  insist  that  there  should 
be  no  artificial  restriction  of  age.  '  I  wanted  money  most  when 
I  was  nineteen,  and  I  could  have  used  it  just  as  well  then  as  I 
could  at  any  later  time.' 

So  he  might  have  been  a  rich  man  at  least  a  year  earlier. 
Well,  much  as  he  had  loathed  Purcell,  he  was  glad,  on  the  whole, 
that  things  were  as  they  were.  He  had  been  still  a  great  fool,  he 
reflected,  a  year  ago. 

Then,  as  to  Louie,  the  letter  ran  :  '  Let  Davy  have  all  the 
money,  and  let  him  manage  for  her.  I  won't  divide  it ;  he  must 
judge.  He  may  want  it  all,  and  it  may  be  best  for  them  both  he 
should  have  it.  He's  got  a  good  heart ;  I  know  that ;  he'll  not 
rob  his  sister.  I  lay  it  on  him,  now  I'm  dying,  to  be  patient 
with  her,  and  look  after  her.  She's  not  like  other  children.  But 
it's  not  her  fault ;  it  was  born  in  her.  Let  him  see  her  married 
to  a  decent  man,  and  then  give  her  what's  honestly  hers.  That 
little  lad  has  nursed  me  like  a  woman  since  I've  been  ill.  He  was 
always  a  good  lad  to  me,  and  I'd  like  him  to  know  when  he's 
grown  up  that  his  father  loved  him — ' 

But  here  the  poor  laboured  scrawl  came  to  an  end,  save  for  a 
few  incoherent  strokes.  David  thrust  it  back  into  his  pocket. 
His  cheek  was  red ;  his  eyes  burnt ;  he  sat  for  long,  with  his 
elbows  on  his  knees,  staring  at  the  February  river.  The  choking, 
passionate  impulse  to  comfort  his  father  he  had  felt  so  often  as  a 
child  was  there  again,  by  association,  alive  and  piteous. 

Suddenly  he  woke  up  with  a  start.  There,  to  either  hand,  lay 
the  bridges,  with  the  moving  figures  atop  and  the  hurrying  river 
below.  And  from  one  of  them  his  mother  had  leapt  when  she 
destroyed  herself.  In  the  trance  of  thought  that  followed,  it  was 
to  him  as  though  he  felt  her  wild  nature,  her  lawless  blood,  stir- 
ring within  him,  and  realised,  in  a  fierce,  reluctant  way,  that  he 
was  hers  as  well  as  his  father's.  In  a  sense,  he  shared  Reuben's 
hatred ;  for  he,  best  of  all,  knew  what  she  had  made  his  father 
suffer.  Yet  the  thought  of  her  drew  his  restless  curiosity  after 
it.  Where  did  she  come  from  ?  Who  were  her  kindred  ?  From 
the  south  of  France,  Reuben  thought.  The  lad's  imagination 
travelled  with  difficulty  and  excitement  to  the  far  and  alien  land 
whence  half  his  being  had  sprung.  A  few  scraps  of  poetry  and 
history  recurred  to  him — a  single  tattered  volume  of  '  Monte 
Cristo,'  which  he  had  lately  bought  with  an  odd  lot  at  a  sale — but 
nothing  that  suggested  to  his  fancy  anything  like  the  peasant 
farm  in  the  Mont  Ventoux,  within  sight  of  Aries,  where  Louise 
Suveret's  penurious  childhood  had  been  actually  cradled. 

Two  o'clock  struck  from  the  belfry  of  St.  Paul's,  looming  there 


326  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

to  his  left  in  the  great  bend  of  the  river.  At  the  sound  he  shook 
off  all  his  thoughts.  Let  him  see  something  of  London.  He  had 
two  hours  and  a  half  before  his  train  from  Euston.  Westminster 
first — a  hasty  glance  ;  then  an  omnibus  to  St.  Paul's,  that  he 
might  look  down  upon  the  city  and  its  rush  ;  then  north.  He  had 
a  map  with  him,  and  his  quick  intelligence  told  him  exactly  how 
to 'Use  his  time  to  the  best  advantage.  Years  afterwards  he  was 
accustomed  to  look  back  on  this  hour  spent  on  the  top  of  an 
omnibus,  which  was  making  its  difficult  way  to  the  Bank  through 
the  crowded  afternoon  streets,  as  one  of  the  strong  impressions 
of  his  youth.  Here  was  one  centre  of  things ;  Westminster 
represented  another  ;  and  both  stood  for  knowledge,  wealth,  and 
power.  The  boy's  hot  blood  rose  to  the  challenge.  His  foot  was 
on  the  ladder,  and  many  men  with  less  chances  than  he  had  risen 
to  the  top.  At  this  moment,  small  Manchester  tradesman  that 
he  was,  he  had  the  constant  presentiment  of  a  wide  career. 

That  night  he  let  himself  into  his  own  door  somewhere  about 
nine  o'clock.  What  had  Louie  been  doing  with  herself  all  day  ? 
She  was  to  have  her  first  lesson  from  Dora  Lomax  ;  but  she  must 
have  been  dull  since,  unless  Dora  had  befriended  her. 

To  his  astonishment,  as  he  shut  the  door  he  heard  voices  in 
the  kitchen — Louie  and  John.  John,  the  shy,  woman-hating 
creature,  who  had  received  the  news  of  Louie's  expected  advent 
in  a  spirit  of  mingled  irritation  and  depression — who,  after  his 
first  startled  look  at  her  as  she  passed  through  the  shop,  seemed 
to  David  to  have  fled  the  sight  of  her  whenever  it  was  possible  ! 

Louie  was  talking  so  fast  and  laughing  so  much  that  neither  of 
them  had  heard  David's  latchkey,  and  in  his  surprise  the  brother 
stood  still  a  moment  in  the  dark,  looking  round  the  kitchen-door, 
which  stood  a  little  open.  Louie  was  sitting  by  the  fire  with  some 
yards  of  flowered  cotton  stuff  on  her  knee,  at  which  she  was  sew- 
ing ;  John  was  opposite  to  her  on  the  oak  stool,  crouched  over  a 
box  of  nails,  from  which  he  was  laboriously  sorting  out  those  of  a 
certain  size,  apparently  at  her  bidding,  for  she  gave  him  sharp 
directions  from  time  to  time.  But  his  toil  was  intermittent,  for 
whenever  her  sallies  were  louder  or  more  amusing  than  usual  his 
hand  paused,  and  he  sat  staring  at  her,  his  small  eyes  expanding, 
a  sympathetic  grin  stealing  over  his  mouth. 

It  seemed  to  David  that  she  was  describing  her  lover  of  the 
winter ;  he  caught  her  gesture  as  she  illustrated  her  perform- 
ance with  Jim  Wigson — the  boxing  of  the  amorous  lout's  ears 
in  the  lane  by  the  Dye-works.  Her  beautiful  curly  black  hair 
was  combed  to-night  into  a  sort  of  wild  halo  round  her  brow 
and  cheeks,  and  in  this  arrangement  counteracted  the  one  fault 
of  the  face — a  slightly  excessive  length  from  forehead  to  chin. 
But  the  brilliance  of  the  eyes,  the  redness  of  the  thin  lips  over 
the  small  and  perfect  teeth,  the  flush  on  the  olive  cheek,  the 
slender  neck,  the  distinction  and  delicacy  of  every  sweeping  line 
and  curve — for  the  first  time  even  David  realised,  as  he  stood 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  227 

there  in  the  dark,  that  his  sister  was  an  extraordinary  beauty. 
Strange  !  Her  manner  and  voice  had  neither'  natural  nor 
acquired  refinement ;  and  yet  in  the  moulding  of  the  head  and 
face  there  was  a  dignity  and  perfection — a  touch,  as  it  were,  of 
the  grand  style — which  marked  her  out  in  a  northern  crowd  and 
riveted  the  northern  eye.  Was  it  the  trace  of  another  national 
character,  another  civilisation,  longer  descended,  less  mixed, 
more  deeply  graven  than  ours  ? 

But  what  was  that  idiot  John  doing  here  ? — the  young  master 
wanted  to  know.  He  coughed  loudly  and  hung  up  his  hat  and 
his  stick,  to  let  them  hear  that  he  was  there.  The  pair  in  the 
kitchen  started.  Louie  sprang  up.  flung  down  her  work,  and  ran 
out  to  him. 

'  Well,'  said  she  breathlessly,  '  have  you  got  it  ? ' 

'Yes.' 

She  gave  a  little  shriek  of  excitement. 

'Show  it  then.' 

'There's  nothing  to  show  but  a  cheque.  It's  all  right.  Is 
there  anything  for  supper  ? ' 

'There's  some  bread  and  cheese  and  cold  apple-pie  in  there,' 
said  Louie,  annoyed  with  him  already ;  then,  turning  her  head 
over  her  shoulder,  '  Mr.  Dalby,  I'll  trouble  you  to  get  them  out. ' 

With  awkward  alacrity  John  flew  to  do  her  bidding.  When 
the  lad  had  ransacked  the  cupboard  and  placed  all  the  viands  it 
contained  on  the  table,  he  looked  at  David.  That  young  man, 
with  a  pucker  in  his  brow,  was  standing  by  the  fire  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  making  short  answers  to  Louie's  sharp  and 
numerous  questions. 

'That's  all  I  can  find,'  said  John.  'Shall  I  run  for  some- 
thing ? ' 

'Thanks,'  said  David,  still  frowning,  and  sat  him  down, 
'that 'lido.' 

Louie  made  a  face  at  John  behind  her  brother's  back.  The 
assistant  slowly  flushed  a  deep  red.  In  this  young  fellow,  with 
his  money  buttoned  on  his  breast,  both  he  and  Louie  for  the  first 
time  realised  the  master. 

'Well,  good  night,'  he  said,  hesitating,  'I'm  going.' 

David  jumped  up  ?.nd  went  with  him  into  the  passage. 

'  Look  here,'  he  said  abruptly,  '  you  and  I  have  got  some  busi- 
ness to  talk  to-morrow.  I'm  not  going  to  keep  you  slaving  here 
for  nothing  now  that  I  can  afford  to  pay  you. ' 

'  Are  you  going  to  turn  me  off  ? '  said  the  other  hastily. 

David  laughed.     The  cloud  had  all  cleared  from  his  brow. 

'  Don't  be  such  a  precious  fool ! '  he  said.  '  Now  be  off — and 
seven  sharp.  I  must  go  at  it  like  ten  horses  to-morrow. ' 

John  disappeared  into  the  night,  and  David  went  back  to  his 
Bister.  He  found  her  looking  red  and  excited,  and  sewing  ener- 
getically. 

'  Look  here  ! '  she  said,  lifting  a  threatening  eye  to  him  as  he 
entered  the  room.  '  I'm  not  going  to  be  treated  like  a  baby.  If 


228  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

you  don't  tell  me  all  about  that  money,  I'll  write  to  Mr.  Gurney 
myself.  It's  part  of  it  mine,  and  /'ZZ  know,  so  there  ! ' 

'  I'll  tell  you  everything,'  he  said  quietly,  putting  a  hand  into 
his  coat  pocket  before  he  sat  down  to  his  supper  again.  '  There's 
the  cheque — and  there's  our  father's  letter, — what  Mr.  Gurney 
gave  me.  There  was  no  proper  will — this  was  instead.' 

He  pretended  to  eat,  but  in  reality  he  watched  her  anxiously 
as  she  read  it.  •  The  result  was  very  much  what  he  had  expected. 
She  ran  breathlessly  through  it,  then,  with  a  look  all  flame  and 
fury,  she  broke  out— 

'  Upon  my  word  !  So  you're  going  to  take  it  all,  and  I'm  to 
be  beholden  to  you  for  every  penny.  I'd  like  to  see  myself  ! ' 

'Now  look  here,  Louie,'  he  said,  firmly,  pushing  back  his  chair 
from  the  table,  '  I  want  to  explain  things  to  you.  I  should  like 
to  tell  you  all  about  my  business,  and  what  I  think  of  doing,  and 
then  you  can  judge  for  yourself.  I'll  not  rob  you  or  anyone.' 

Whereupon  with  a  fierce  gesture  she  caught  up  her  work 
again,  and  he  fell  into  long  and  earnest  talk,  setting  his  mind  to 
the  task.  He  explained  to  her  that  the  arrival  of  this  money — 
this  capital — made  just  all  the  difference,  that  the  whole  of  it 
would  be  infinitely  more  useful  to  him  than  the  half,  and  that  he 
proposed  to  employ  it  both  for  her  benefit  and  his  own.  He  had 
already  cleared  out  the  commission  agent  from  the  first  floor,  and 
moved  down  the  lodgers — a  young  foreman  and  his  wife — from 
the  attics  to  the  first-floor  back.  That  left  the  two  attics  for  him- 
self and  Louie,  and  gave  him  the  front  first-floor  room,  the  best 
room  in  the  house,  for  an  extension  of  stock. 

'  Why  don't  you  turn  those  people  out  altogether  ? '  said 
Louie,  impatiently.  '  They  pay  very  little,  and  you'll  be  wanting 
that  room  soon,  very  like.' 

'Well,  I  shall  get  it  soon,'  said  David  bluntly;  'but  I  can't 
get  it  now.  Mrs.  Mason's  bad  ;  she  going  to  be  confined.' 

'  Well,  I  dare  say  she  is  ! '  cried  Louie.  '  That  don't  matter  ; 
she  isn't  confined  yet.' 

David  looked  at  her  in  amazement.     Then  his  face  hardened. 

'I'm  not  going  to  turn  her  out,  I  tell  you,'  he  said,  and  imme- 
diately returned  to  his  statement.  Well,  there  were  all  sorts  of 
ways  in  which  he  might  employ  his  money.  He  might  put  up  a 
shed  in  the  back  yard,  and  get  a  printing-press.  He  knew  of  a 
press  and  a  very  decent  fount  of  type,  to  be  had  extremely  cheap. 
John  was  a  capital  workman,  and  between  them  they  might 
reprint  some  of  the  scarce  local  books  and  pamphlets,  which  were 
always  sure  of  a  sale.  As  to  his  stock,  there  were  endless  possi- 
bilities. He  knew  of  a  collection  of  rare  books  on  early  America, 
which  belonged  to  a  gentleman  at  Cheadle.  He  had  been  nego- 
tiating about  them  for  some  time.  Now  he  would  close  at  once  ; 
from  his  knowledge  of  the  market  the  speculation  was  a  certain 
one.  He  was  also  inclined  to  largely  increase  his  stock  of  foreign 
books,  especially  in  the  technical  and  scientific  direction.  There 
was  a  considerable  opening,  he  believed,  for  such  books  in  Man- 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  229 

Chester;  at  any  rate,  be  meant  to  try  for  it.  And  as  soon  as 
ever  he  could  he  should  learn  German.  There  was  a  fellow — a 
German  clerk — who  haunted  the  Parlour,  who  would  teach  him 
in  exchange  for  English  lessons. 

So,  following  a  happy  instinct,  he  opened  to  her  all  his  mind, 
and  talked  to  her  as  though  they  were  partners  in  a  firm.  The 
event  proved  that  he  could  have  done  nothing  better.  Very 
early  in  his  exposition  she  began  to  put  her  wits  to  his,  her  irrita- 
tion dropped,  and  he  was  presently  astonished  at  the  intelligence 
she  showed.  Every  element  almost  in  the  problems  discussed 
was  unfamiliar  to  her,  yet  after  a  while  a  listener  coming  in 
might  have  thought  that  she  too  had  been  Purcell's  apprentice, 
so  nimbly  had  she  gathered  up  the  details  involved,  so  quick  she 
was  to  see  David's  points  and  catch  his  phrases.  If  there  was  no 
moral  fellowship  between  them,  judging  from  to-night,  there 
bade  fair  to  be  a  comradeship  of  intelligence. 

'There  now,'  he  said,  when  he  had  come  to  the  end  of  his 
budget,  '  you  leave  your  half  of  the  money  to  me.  Mind,  I  agree 
it's  your  half,  and  I'll  do  the  best  I  can  with  it.  I'll  pay  you 
interest  on  it  for  two  years,  and  I'll  keep  you.  Then  we'll  see. 
And  if  you  want  to  improve  yourself  a  bit,  instead  of  going  to 
work  at  once,  I'll  pay  for  teachers.  And  look  here,  we'll  keep 
good  friends  over  it.' 

His  keen  eyes  softened  to  a  charming,  half -melancholy  smile. 
Louie  took  no  notice  ;  she  was  absorbed  in  meditation  ;  and  at 
the  end  of  it,  she  said  with  a  long  breath — 

'  Well,  you  may  have  it,  and  I'll  keep  an  eye  on  the  accounts. 
But  you  needn't  think  I'll  sit  at  home  "  improving "  myself ! 
Not  I.  I'll  do  that  church-work.  That  girl  gave  me  a  lesson  this 
morning,  and  I'm  going  again  to-morrow.' 

David  received  the  news  with  satisfaction,  remarking  heartily 
that  Dora  Lomax  was  a  real  good  sort,  and  if  it  weren't  for  her 
the  Parlour  and  Daddy  would  soon  be  in  a  fix.  He  told  the  story 
of  the  Parlour,  dwelling  on  Dora's  virtues. 

4  But  she  is  a  crank,  though  ! '  said  Louie.  '  Why,  if  you  make 
free  with  her  things  a  bit,  or  if  you  call  'em  by  the  wrong  names, 
she'll  fly  at  you  1  How's  anybody  to  know  what  they're  meant  for  ? ' 

David  laughed,  and  got  up  to  get  some  books  he  was  repairing. 
As  he  moved  away  he  looked  back  a  moment. 

'  I  say,  Louie,'  he  began,  hesitating,  '  that  fellow  John's 
worked  for  me  like  a  dozen,  and  has  never  taken  a  farthing  from 
me.  Don't  you  go  and  make  a  fool  of  him.' 

A  flush  passed  over  Louie's  face.  She  lifted  her  hand  and 
tucked  away  some  curly  ends  of  long  hair  that  had  fallen  on  her 
shoulders. 

'  He's  like  one  of  Aunt  Hannah's  suet  rolies,'  she  said,  after  a 
minute,  with  a  gleam  of  her  white  teeth.  '  Seems  as  if  some  one 
had  tied  him  in  a  cloth  and  boiled  him  that  shape.' 

Neither  of  them  cared  to  go  to  bed.     They  sat  up  talking. 


230  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

David  was  mending,  sorting,  and  pricing  a  number  of  old  books 
he  had  bought  for  nothing  at  a  country  sale.  He  knew  enough 
of  bookbinding  to  do  the  repairing  with  much  skill,  showing  the 
same  neatness  of  finger  in  it  that  he  had  shown  years  ago  in  the 
carving  of  toy  boats  and  water-wheels.  Louie  went  on  with  her 
work,  which  proved  to  be  a  curtain  for  her  attic.  She  meant  to 
have  that  room  nice,  and  she  had  been  out  buying  a  few  things, 
whereby  David  understood — as  indeed  Reuben  had  said — that  she 
had  some  savings.  Moreover,  with  regard  to  certain  odd  jobs  of 
carpentering,  she  had  already  pressed  John  into  her  service, 
which  explained  his  lingering  after  hours,  and  his  eagerness 
among  the  nails.  As  to  the  furniture  David  had  bought  for  her, 
on  which,  in  the  intervals  of  his  busy  days,  he  had  spent  some 
time  and  trouble,  and  of  which  he  was  secretly  proud,  humble 
and  cheap  as  it  was — she  took  it  for  granted.  He  could  not 
remember  that  she  had  said  any  '  thank  you's '  since  she  came. 

Still,  youth  and  comradeship  were  pleasant.  The  den  in 
which  they  sat  was  warm  with  light  and  fire,  and  was  their  own. 
Louie's  exultation,  too,  in  their  change  of  fortune,  which  flashed 
out  of  her  at  every  turn,  was  infectious,  and  presently  his  spirits 
rose  with  hers,  and  the  two  lost  themselves  in  the  excitement  of 
large  schemes  and  new  horizons. 

After  a  time  he  found  himself  comparing  notes  with  her  as  to 
that  far-off  crisis  of  his  running  away. 

'  I  suppose  you  heard  somehow  about  Jim  Wigson  and  me  ? ' 
he  asked  her,  his  pulse  quickening  after  all  these  years. 

She  nodded  with  a  little  grin.  He  had  already  noticed,  by  the 
way,  that  she,  while  still  living  among  the  moors,  had  almost 
shaken  herself  free  of  the  Kinder  dialect,  whereas  it  had  taken 
quite  a  year  of  Manchester  life  to  rub  off  his  own  Doric. 

'  Well,  you  didn't  imagine  ' — he  went  on — '  I  was  going  to  stop 
after  that  f  I  could  put  a  knife  between  Jim's  ribs  now  when  I 
think  of  it ! ' 

And,  pushing  his  book  away  from  him,  he  sat  recalling  that 
long  past  shame,  his  face,  glowing  with  vindictive  memory, 
framed  in  his  hands. 

'  I  don't  see,  though,  what  you  sneaked  off  for  like  that  after 
all  you'd  promised  me,'  she  said  with  energy. 

'  No,  it  was  hard  on  you,'  he  admitted.  '  But  I  couldn't  think 
of  any  other  way  out.  I  was  mad  with  everybody,  and  just 
wanted  to  cut  and  run.  But  before  I  hit  on  that  notion  about 
Tom '  (he  had  just  been  explaining  to  her  in  detail,  not  at  all  to 
her  satisfaction,  his  device  for  getting  regular  news  of  her)  '  I 
used  to  spend  half  my  time  wondering  what  you'd  do.  I  thought, 
perhaps,  you'd  run  away  too,  and  that  would  have  been  a  kettle 
of  fish.' 

'  I  did  run  away,'  she  said,  her  wild  eyes  sparkling — '  twice.' 

'  Jiminy  ! '  said  David  with  a  schoolboy  delight,  '  let's  hear  ! ' 

"Whereupon  she  took  up  her  tale  and  told  him  a  great  deal  that 
was  still  quite  unknown  to  him.  She  told  it  in  her  own  way  with 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  231 

characteristic  blindnesses  and  hardnesses,  but  the  truth  of  it  was 
this.  The  very  day  after  David's  departure  she  too  had  run  away, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Hannah  was  keeping  her  in  something 
very  like  imprisonment.  She  supposed  that  David  had  gone  to 
Manchester,  and  she  meant  to  follow  him  there.  But  she  had 
been  caught  begging  the  other  side  of  Glossop  by  a  policeman, 
who  was  a  native  of  Clough  End  and  knew  all  about  her. 

1  He  made  me  come  along  back,  but  he  must  have  got  the 
mark  on  his  wrist  still  where  I  bit  him,  I  should  think,'  remarked 
Miss  Louie,  with  a  satisfaction  untouched  apparently  by  the  lapse 
of  time. 

The  next  attempt  had  been  more  serious.  It  was  some  months 
afterwards,  and  by  this  time  she  was  in  despair  about  David,  and 
had  made  up  her  passionate  mind  that  she  would  never  see  him 
again.  But  she  loathed  Hannah  more  and  more,  and  at  last,  in 
the  middle  of  a  snowy  February,  the  child  determined  to  find  her 
way  over  the  Peak-  into  the  wild  valley  of  the  Woodlands,  and  so 
to  Ashopton  and  Sheffield,  in  which  last  town  she  meant  to  go  to 
service.  But  in  the  effort  to  cross  the  plateau  of  the  Peak  she 
very  nearly  lost  her  life.  Long  before  she  came  in  sight  of  the 
Snake  Inn,  on  the  Woodlands  side,  she  sank  exhausted  in  the 
snow,  and,  but  for  some  Frimley  shepherds  who  were  out  after 
their  sheep,  she  would  have  drawn  her  last  breath  in  that  grim 
solitude.  They  carried  her  down  to  Frimley  and  dropped  her  at 
the  nearest  shelter,  which  happened  to  be  Margaret  Dawson's 
cottage. 

Margaret  was  then  in  the  first  smart  of  her  widowhood.  'Lias 
was  just  dead,  and  she  was  withering  physically  and  mentally 
under  the  heart-hunger  of  her  loss.  The  arrival  of  the  pallid, 
half -conscious  child — David's  sister,  with  David's  eyes — for  a  time 
distracted  and  appeased  her.  She  nursed  the  poor  waif,  and  sent 
word  to  jSTeedham  Farm.  Eeuben  came  for  the  girl,  and  Margaret, 
pai'tly  out  of  compassion,  partly  out  of  a  sense  of  her  own  decaying 
strength,  bribed  her  to  go  back  home  by  the  promise  of  teaching 
her  the  silk-weaving. 

Louie  learnt  the  trade  with  surprising  quickness,  and  as  she 
shot  up  in  stature  and  her  fingers  gained  in  cunning  and  rapidity, 
Margaret  became  more  bowed,  helpless  and  '  fond,'  until  at  last 
Louie  did  everything,  brought  home  the  weft  and  warp,  set  it  up, 
worked  off  the  '  cuts,'  and  took  them  to  the  warehouse  in  Clough 
End  to  be  paid  ;  while  Margaret  sat  in  the  chimney  corner,  pining 
inwardly  for  'Lias  and  dropping  deeper  day  by  day  into  the  gulf 
of  age.  By  this  time  of  course  various  money  arrangements  had 
been  made  between  them,  superintended  by  Margaret's  brother,  a 
weaver  in  the  same  village  who  found  it  necessary  to  keep  a  very 
sharp  eye  on  this  girl-apprentice  whom  Margaret  had  picked  up. 
Of  late  Louie  had  been  paying  Margaret  rent  for  the  loom, 
together  with  a  certain  percentage  on  the  weekly  earnings, 
practically  for  'goodwill.'  And  on  this  small  sum  the  widow 
had  managed  to  live  and  keep  her  home,  while  Louie  launched 


232  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

gloriously  into  new  clothes,  started  a  savings-bank  book,  and 
snapped  her  fingers  for  good  and  all  at  Hannah,  who  put  up  with 
her,  however,  in  a  sour  silence  because  of  Mr.  Gurney's  cheques. 

'  And  Margaret  can't  do  anything  for  herself  now  ? '  asked 
David.  He  had  followed  the  story  with  eagerness.  For  years  the 
remembrance  had  rankled  in  his  mind  how  during  his  last  months 
at  Kinder,  when  'Lias  was  dying,  and  the  old  pair  were  more  in 
want  than  ever  of  the  small  services  he  had  been  accustomed  to 
render  them,  he  had  forgotten  and  neglected  his  friends  because 
he  had  been  absorbed  in  the  excitements  of  '  conversion,'  so  that 
when  Tom  Mullins  had  told  him  in  general  terms  that  his  sister 
Louie  was  supporting  both  Margaret  and  herself,  the  news  had 
soothed  a  remorse. 

'  I  should  just  think  not ! '  said  Louie  in  answer  to  his  question. 
'  She's  gone  most  silly,  and  she  hasn't  got  the  right  use  of  her  legs 
either.' 

'  Poor  old  thing  ! '  said  David  softly,  falling  into  a  dream.  He 
was  thinking  of  Margaret  in  her  active,  happy  days  when  she 
used  to  bake  scones  for  him,  or  mend  his  clothes,  or  rate  him  for 
'  worriting '  'Lias.  Then  wakening  up  he  drew  the  book  he  was 
binding  towards  him  again.  '  She  must  have  been  precious  glad 
to  have  you  to  do  for  her,  Louie,'  he  said  contentedly. 

'Do  for  her?'  Louie  opened  her  eyes.  'As  if  I  could  be 
worrited  with  her  !  I  had  my  work  to  do,  thank  you.  There 
was  a  niece  used  to  come  in  and  see  to  her.  She  used  to  get  in 
my  way  dreadful  sometimes.  She'd  have  fits  of  thinking  she 
could  work  the  loom  again,  and  I'd  have  to  keep  her  away — 
regular  frighten  her.' 

David  started. 

'  Who'll  work  the  loom  now  ? '  he  asked  ;  his  look  and  tone 
altering  to  match  hers. 

'  I'm  sure  I  don't  know,' said  Louie,  carelessly.  'Very  like 
she'll  not  get  anyone.  The  work's  been  slack  a  long  while. ' 

David  suddenly  drew  back  from  his  bookbinding. 

'  When  did  you  let  her  know,  Louie — about  me  ? '  he  asked 
quickly. 

'  Let  her  know  ?  Who  was  to  let  her  know  ?  Your  letter  came 
eight  o'clock  and  our  train  started  half-past  ten.  I'd  just  time  to 
pitch  my  things  together  and  that  was  about  all.' 

'  And  you  never  sent,  and  you  haven't  written  ? ' 

'You  leave  me  alone,'  said  the  girl,  turning  instantly  sulky 
under  his  tone  and  look.  '  It's  nowt  to  you  what  I  do.' 

'  Why  ! '  he  said,  his  voice  shaking,  '  she'd  be  waiting  and 
waiting — and  she's  got  nothing  else  to  depend  on.' 

'  There's  her  brother,'  said  Louie  angrily,  '  and  if  he  won't 
take  her,  there's  the  workhouse.  They'll  take  her  there  fast 
enough,  and  she  won't  know  anything  about  it.' 

'  The  workhouse ! '  cried  David,  springing  up,  incensed  past 
bearing  by  her  callous  way.  '  Margaret  that  took  you  in  out  of 
the  snow  ! — you  said  it  yourself.  And  you — you'd  not  lift  a 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  233 

finger — not  you — you'd  not  even  give  her  notice— "  chuck  her 
into  the  workhouse — that's  good  enough  for  her  !  "  It's  vile, — 
that's  what  it  is  ! ' 

He  stood,  choked  by  his  own  wrath,  eyeing  her  fiercely — a 
young  thunder  god  of  disdain  and  condemnation. 

Louie  too  got  up — gathering  up  her  work  round  her — and  gave 
him  back  his  look  with  interest  before  she  flung  out  of  the 
room. 

'  Keep  a  civil  tongue  in  your  head,  sir,  or  I'll  let  you  know,' 
she  cried.  '  I'll  not  be  called  over  the  coals  by  you  nor  nobody. 
I'll  do  what  I  please, — and  if  you  don't  like  it  you  can  do  the 
other  thing — so  there — now  you  know  ! ' 

And  with  a  nod  of  the  utmost  provocation  and  defiance  she 
banged  the  door  behind  her  and  went  up  to  bed. 

David  flung  down  the  pen  with  which  he  had  been  lettering 
his  books  on  the  table,  and,  drawing  a  chair  up  to  the  fire,  he  sat 
moodily  staring  into  the  embers.  So  it  was  all  to  begin  again — 
the  long  wrangle  and  jar  of  their  childhood.  Why  had  he  broken 
silence  and  taken  this  burden  once  more  upon  his  shoulders  ?  He 
had  a  moment  of  passionate  regret.  It  seemed  to  him  more  than 
he  could  bear.  No  gratitude,  no  kindness ;  and  this  fierce 
tongue  ! 

After  a  while  he  fetched  pen  and  paper  and  began  to  write  on 
his  knee,  while  his  look  kindled  again.  He  wrote  to  Margaret,  a 
letter  of  boyish  effusion  and  affection,  his  own  conscience  quick- 
ened to  passion  by  Louie's  lack  of  conscience.  He  had  never 
forgotten  her,  he  said,  and  he  wished  he  could  see  her  again. 
She  must  write,  or  get  some  one  to  write  for  her — and  tell  him 
what  she  was  going  to  do  now  that  Louie  had  left  her.  He  had 
been  angry  with  Louie  for  coming  away  without  sending  word. 
But  what  he  wanted  to  say  was  this  :  if  Margaret  could  get  no  one 
to  work  the  loom,  he,  David,  would  pay  her  brother  four  shillings 
a  week,  for  six  months  certain,  towards  her  expenses  if  he  would 
take  her  in  and  look  after  her.  She  must  ask  somebody  to  write 
at  once  and  say  what  was  to  be  done.  If  her  brother  consented  to 
take  her,  David  would  send  a  post-office  order  for  the  first  month 
at  once.  He  was  doing  well  in  his  business,  and  there  would  be 
no  doubt  about  the  payments. 

He  made  his  proposal  with  a  haste  and  impulsiveness  very 
unlike  the  cool  judgment  he  had  so  far  shown  in  his  business.  It 
never  occurred  to  him  to  negotiate  with  the  brother  who  might 
be  quite  well  able  to  maintain  his  sister  without  help.  Besides 
he  remembered  him  as  a  hard  man  of  whom  both  Margaret  and 
'Lias — soft,  sensitive  creatures — were  both  more  or  less  afraid. 
No,  there  should  be  no  doubt  about  it — not  a  day's  doubt,  if  he 
could  help  it !  He  could  help,  and  he  would  ;  and  if  they  asked 
him  more  he  would  give  it.  Nearly  midnight !  But  if  he  ran 
out  to  the  General  Post  Office  it  would  be  in  time. 

When  he  had  posted  it  and  was  walking  home,  his  anger  was 
all  gone.  But  in  its  stead  was  the  smart  of  a  baffled  instinct — the 


234  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  11 

hunger  for  sympathy,  for  love,  for  that  common  everyday  life  of 
the  affections  which  had  never  been  his,  while  it  came  so  easily 
to  other  people. 

In  his  chafing  distress  he  felt  the  curb  of  something  unknown 
before ;  or,  rather,  what  had  of  late  taken  the  pleasant  guise  of 
kinship  and  natural  affection  assumed  to-night  another  and  a 
sterner  aspect,  and  in  this  strait  of  conduct,  that  sheer  '  impera- 
tive '  which  we  carry  within  us  made  itself  for  the  first  time  heard 
and  realised. 

'  I  have  done  my  duty  and  must  abide  by  it.  I  must  bear 
with  her  and  look  after  her.' 

Why? 

'  Because  my  father  laid  it  on  me  ? ' — 

And  because  there  is  a  life  within  our  life  which  urges  and 
presses  ? — because  we  are  '  not  our  own '  ?  But  this  is  an  answer 
which  implies-  a  whole  theology.  And  at  this  moment  of  his  life 
David  had  not  a  particle  or  shred  of  theology  about  him.  Except, 
indeed,  that,  like  Voltaire,  he  was  graciously  inclined  to  think  a 
First  Cause  probable. 

Next  day  this  storm  blew  over,  as  storms  do.  Louie  came 
down  early  and  made  the  porridge  for  breakfast.  "When  David 
appeared  she  carried  things  off  with  a  high  hand,  and  behaved 
as  if  nothing  had  happened ;  but  anyone  accustomed  to  watch 
her  would  have  seen  a  certain  quick  nervousness  in  her  black, 
wild  bird's  eyes.  As  for  David,  after  a  period  of  gruffness 
and  silence,  he  passed  by  degrees  into  his  usual  manner.  Louie 
spent  the  day  with  Dora,  and  he  went  off  to  Cheadle  to  conclude 
the  purchase  of  that  collection  of  American  books  he  had 
described  to  Louie.  But  first,  on  his  way,  he  walked  proudly 
into  Heywood's  bank  and  opened  an  account  there,  receiving  the 
congratulations  of  an  old  and  talkative  cashier,  who  already  knew 
the  lad  and  was  interested  in  his  prospects,  with  the  coolness  of 
one  who  takes  good  fortune  as  his  right. 

In  the  afternoon  he  was  busy  in  the  shop — not  too  busy,  how- 
ever, to  notice  John.  "What  ailed  the  lad  ?  While  he  was  inside, 
as  soon  as  the  door  did  but  creak  in  the  wind  he  sprang  to  open 
it,  but  for  the  most  part  he  preferred  to  stand  outside  watching 
the  stall  and  the  street.  When  Louie  appeared  about  five  o'clock 
— for  her  hours  with  Dora  were  not  yet  regular — he  forthwith 
became  her  slave.  She  set  him  to  draw  up  the  fire  while  she  got 
the  tea,  and  then,  without  taking  any  notice  of  David,  she 
marched  John  upstairs  to  help  her  hang  her  curtains,  lay  her 
carpet,  and  nail  up  the  coloured  fashion  plates  and  newspaper 
prints  of  royalties  or  beauties  with  which  she  was  adorning  the 
bare  walls  of  the  attic. 

When  all  her  additions  had  been  made  to  David's  original 
stock  ;  when  the  little  deal  dressing-table  and  glass  had  been 
draped  in  the  cheapest  of  muslins  over  the  pinkest  of  calicoes  ; 
when  the  flowery  curtains  had  been  tied  back  with  blue  ribbons  ; 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  235 

when  the  china  vases  on  the  mantelpiece  had  been  filled  with 
nodding  plumes  of  dyed  grasses,  mostly  of  a  rosy  red ;  and  a 
long  glass  in  a  somewhat  damaged  condition,  but  still  presenting 
enough  surface  to  enable  Miss  Louie  to  study  herself  therein  from 
top  to  toe,  had  been  propped  against  the  wall ;  there  was  and  could 
be  nothing  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Potter  Street,  so  John  re- 
flected, as  he  furtively  looked  about  him,  to  vie  with  the  splendours 
of  Miss  Grieve's  apartment.  There  was  about  it  a  sensuousness, 
a  deliberate  quest  of  luxury  and  gaiety,  which  a  raw  son  of 
poverty  could  feel  though  he  could  not  put  it  into  words.  No 
Manchester  girl  he  had  ever  seen  would  have  cared  to  spend  her 
money  in  just  this  way. 

'  Now  that's  real  nice,  Mr.  Dalby,  and  I'm  just  obliged  to  you,' 
said  Louie,  with  patronising  emphasis,  as  she  looked  round  upon 
his  labours.  '  I  do  like  to  get  a  man  to  do  things  for  you — he's 
got  some  strength  in  him — not  like  a  gell  ! ' 

And  she  looked  down  at  herself  and  at  the  long,  thin-fingered 
hand  against  her  dress,  with  affected  contempt.  John  looked  at 
her  too,  but  turned  his  head  away  again  quickly. 

'  And  yet  you're  pretty  strong  too,  Miss,'  he  ventured. 

'"Well,  perhaps  I  am,'  she  admitted  ;  '  and  a  good  thing  too, 
when  you  come  to  think  of  the  rough  time  I  had  over  there ' — 
and  she  jerked  her  head  behind  her — '  ever  since  Davy  ran  away 
from  me.' 

'  Ran  away  from  you,  Miss  ? ' 

She  nodded,  pressing  her  lips  together  with  the  look  of  one 
who  keeps  a  secret  from  the  highest  motives.  But  she  brought 
two  beautiful  plaintive  eyes  to  bear  on  John,  and  he  at  once  felt 
sure  that  David's  conduct  had  been  totally  inexcusable. 

Then  suddenly  she  broke  into  a  laugh.  She  was  sitting  on 
the  edge  of  the  bed,  swinging  her  feet  lightly  backwards  and 
forwards. 

'  Look  here  ! '  she  said,  dropping  her  voice,  and  looking  round 
at  the  door.  '  Do  you  know  a  lot  about  Davy's  affairs  ? — you  're 
a  great  friend  of  his,  aren't  you  ? ' 

'  I  s'pose  so,'  said  the  lad,  awkwardly. 

'  Well,  has  he  been  making  up  to  anybody  that  you  know  of  ? ' 

John's  invisible  eyebrows  stretched  considerably.  He  was  so 
astonished  that  he  did  not  readily  find  an  answer. 

'Why,  of  course,  I  mean,'  said  Louie,  impatiently,  'is  he  in 
love  with  anybody  ? ' 

'  Not  that  I  know  of,  Miss.' 

'Well,  then,  there's  somebody  in  love  with  him,*  said  Louie, 
maliciously  ;  '  and  some  day,  Mr.  Dalby,  if  we  get  a  chance, 
perhaps  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it.' 

The  charming  confidential  smile  she  threw  him  so  bewildered 
the  lad  that  he  hardly  knew  where  he  was. 

But  an  exasperated  shout  of  '  John '  from  the  stairs  recalled 
him,  and  he  rushed  downstairs  to  help  David  deal  with  a  cargo  of 
books  just  arrived. 


236  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

That  evening  David  ran  up  to  the  Parlour  for  half  an  hour,  to 
have  a  talk  with  Daddy  and  find  out  what  Dora  thought  of  Louie. 
He  had  sent  a  message  by  Louie  about  Reuben's  revelations,  and 
it  occurred  to  him  that  since  Daddy  had  not  been  to  look  him  up 
since,  that  incalculable  person  might  be  offended  that  he  had  not 
brought  his  great  news  in  person.  Besides,  he  had  a  very  strong 
curiosity  to  know  what  had  happened  after  all  to  Lucy  Purcell, 
and  whether  anything  had  been  commonly  observed  of  Purcell's 
demeanour  under  the  checkmate  administered  to  him.  For  the 
past  few  days  he  had  been  wholly  absorbed  in  his  own  affairs, 
and  during  the  previous  week  he  had  seen  nothing  of  either  Daddy 
or  Dora,  except  that  at  a  casual  meeting  in  the  street  with  Daddy 
that  worthy  had  described  his  attack  on  Purcell  with  a  gusto 
worthy  of  his  Irish  extraction. 

He  found  the  restaurant  just  shutting,  and  Daddy  apparently 
on  the  wing  for  the  '  White  Horse '  parlour,  to  judge  from  the 
relief  which  showed  in  Dora's  worn  look  as  she  saw  her  father  lay 
down  his  hat  and  stick  again  and  fall  '  chaffing '  with  David. 

For,  with  regard  to  David's  change  of  position,  the  landlord  of 
the  Parlour  was  in  a  very  testy  frame  of  mind. 

'  Six  hundred  pounds  ! '  he  growled,  when  the  young  fellow 
Bitting  cross-legged  by  the  fire  had  made  an  end  of  describing  to 
them  both  his  journey  to  London.  '  H'm,  your  fun's  over  :  any 
fool  can  do  on  six  hundred  pounds  ! ' 

'Thank  you,  Daddy,'  said  the  lad,  with  a  sarcastic  lip.  'As 
for  you,  I  wonder  you  have  the  face  to  talk  !  Who's  coining 
money  here,  I  should  like  to  know  ? ' 

Dora  looked  up  with  a  start.  Her  father  met  her  look  with  a 
certain  hostility  and  an  obstinate  shake  of  his  thin  shoulders. 

'  Davy,  me  boy,  you're  that  consated  by  now,  you'll  not  be  for 
taking  advice.  But  I'll  give  it  you,  bedad,  to  take  or  to  leave ! 
Never  pitch  your  tent,  sir,  where  you  can't  strike  it  when  you 
want  to  !  But  there's  where  your  beastly  money  comes  in. 
Nobody  need  look  to  you  now  for  any  comprehension  of  the  finer 
sentiments  of  man.' 

'  What  do  you  mean,  Daddy  ? ' 

'  Never  you  mind,'  said  the  old  vagrant,  staring  sombrely  at 
the  floor — the  spleen  in  person.  '  Only  I  want  my  freedom,  I  tell 
you — and  a  bit  of  air,  sometimes — and  by  gad  I'll  have  'em  ! ' 

And  throwing  back  his  grey  head  with  a  jerk  he  fixed  an 
angry  eye  on  Dora.  Dora  had  grown  paler,  but  she  said  nothing  ; 
her  fingers  went  steadily  on  with  her  work  ;  from  early  morning 
now  till  late  night  neither  they  nor  she  were  ever  at  rest.  After 
a  minute's  silence  Lomax  walked  to  the  door,  flung  a  good-night 
behind  him  and  disappeared. 

Dora  hastily  drew  her  hand  across  her  eyes,  then  threaded  her 
needle  as  though  nothing  had  happened.  But  David  was  per- 
plexed and  sorry.  How  white  and  thin  she  looked,  to  be  sure  ! 
That  old  lunatic  must  be  worrying  her  somehow. 

He  moved  his  chair  nearer  to  Dora. 


CHAP,  ix  YOUTH  237 

'  Is  there  anything  wrong,  Miss  Dora  ? '  he  asked  her,  dropping 
his  voice. 

She  looked  up  with  a  quick  gratitude,  his  voice  and  expression 
putting  a  new  life  into  her. 

'  Oh  !  I  don't  know,'  she  said,  gently  and  sadly.  '  Father's 
been  very  restless  these  last  few  weeks.  I  can't  keep  him  at 
home.  And  I'm  not  always  dull  like  this.  I've  done  my  best  to 
cheer  him  up.  And  I  don't  think  there's  much  amiss  with  the 
Parlour — yet — only  the  outgoings  are  so  large  every  day.  I'm 
always  feeart — ' 

She  paused,  and  a  visible  tremor  ran  through  her.  David's 
quick  eye  understood  the  signs  of  strain  and  fatigue,  and  he  felt 
a  brotherly  pity  for  her — a  softer,  more  normal  feeling  than 
Louie  had  ever  called  out  in  him. 

'  I  say,'  he  said  heartily,  '  if  there's  anything  I  can  do,  you'll 
let  me  know,  won't  you  ? ' 

She  smiled  at  him,  and  then  turned  to  her  work  again  in  a 
hurry,  afraid  of  her  own  eyes  and  lips,  and  what  they  might  be 
saying. 

'Oh  !  I  dare  say  I  fret  myself  too  much,'  she  said,  with  the 
tone  of  one  determined  to  be  cheered.  And,  by  way  of  protecting 
her  own  quivering  heart,  she  fell  upon  the  subject  of  Louie.  She 
showed  the  brother  some  of  Louie's  first  attempts — some  of  the 
stitches  she  had  been  learning. 

'  She's  that  quick  ! '  she  said,  wondering.  '  In  a  few  days  I'm 
going  to  trust  her  with  that,'  and  she  pointed  to  a  fine  old  piece 
of  Venetian  embroidery,  which  had  to  be  largely  repaired  before 
it  could  be  made  up  into  an  altar-cloth  and  presented  to  St. 
Damian's  by  a  rich  and  devoted  member  of  the'  congregation. 

'  Does  she  get  in  your  way  ? '  the  brother  inquired. 

'  N-o,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  paying  particular  attention  to 
a  complicated  stitch.  '  She'll  get  used  to  me  and  the  work  soon. 
She'll  make  a  first-rate  hand  if  she's  patient  a  bit.  They'll  be 
glad  to  take  her  on  at  the  shop.' 

'  But  you'll  not  turn  her  out  ?  You'll  let  her  work  here,  along- 
side of  you  ? '  said  the  young  man  eagerly.  He  had  just  met 
Louie,  in  the  dark,  walking  up  Market  Street  with  a  seedy 
kind  of  gentleman,  who  he  had  reason  to  know  was  a  bad  lot. 
John  was  off  his  head  about  her,  and  no  longer  of  much  use  to 
anybody,  and  in  these  few  days  other  men,  as  it  seemed  to  him, 
had  begun  to  hang  about.  The  difficulties  of  his  guardianship 
were  thickening  upon  him,  and  he  clung  to  Dora's  help. 

'  No  ;  I'll  not  turn  her  out.  She  may  work  here  if  she  wants 
to,'  said  Dora,  with  the  same  slowness. 

And  all  the  time  she  was  saying  to  herself  passionately  that,  if 
Louie  Grieve  had  not  been  his  sister,  she  should  never  have  set 
foot  in  that  room  again  !  In  the  two  days  they  had  been  together 
Louie  had  outraged  almost  every  feeling  the  other  possessed.  And 
there  was  a  burning  dread  in  Dora's  mind  that  even  the  secret  of 
her  heart  of  hearts  had  been  somehow  discovered  by  the  girl's 


238  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

hawk-like  sense.  But  she  had  promised  to  help  him,  and  she 
would. 

'  You  must  let  me  know  what  I  owe  you  for  teaching  her  and 
introducing  her,'  said  David  firmly.  '  Yes,  you  must,  Miss  Dora. 
It's  business,  and  you  mustn't  make  any  bones  about  it.  A  girl 
doesn't  learn  a  trade  and  get  an  opening  found  her  for  nothing. ' 

'  Oh  no,  nonsense  ! '  she  said  quickly,  but  with  decision  equal 
to  his  own.  'I  won't  take  anything.  She  don't  want  much 
teaching ;  she's  so  clever  ;  she  sees  a  thing  almost  before  the 
words  are  out  of  your  mouth.  Look  here,  Mr.  Grieve,  I  want  to 
tell  you  about  Lucy.' 

She  looked  up  at  him,  flushing.     He,  too,  coloured. 

4  Well,'  he  said  ;  '  that's  what  I  wanted  to  ask  you.' 

She  told  him  the  whole  story  of  Lucy's  flight  from  her  fattier, 
of  her  illness  and  departure,  of  the  probable  stepmother. 

'  Old  brute  ! '  said  David  between  his  teeth.  '  I  say,  Miss 
Dora,  can  nothing  be  done  to  make  him  treat  her  decently  ? ' 

His  countenance  glowed  with  indignation  and  disgust.  Dora 
shook  her  head  sadly. 

'  I  don't  see  what  anyone  can  do  ;  and  the  worst  of  it  is  she'll 
be  such  a  long  while  getting  over  it.  I've  had  a  letter  from  her 
this  morning,  and  she  says  the  Hastings  doctor  declares  she  must 
stay  there  a  year  in  the  warm  and  not  come  home  at  all,  or  she'll 
be  going  off  in  a  decline.  I  know  Lucy  gets  nervous  about 
herself,  but  it  do  seem  bad.' 

David  sat  silent,  lost  in  a  medley  of  feelings,  most  of  them 
unpleasant.  Now  that  Lucy  Purcell  was  at  the  other  end  of 
England,  both  her  service  to  him  and  his  own  curmudgeon 
behaviour  to  her  loomed  doubly  large. 

'  I  say,  will  you  give  me  her  address  ? '  he  said  at  last.  '  I've 
got  a  smart  book  I've  had  bound  for  her.  I'd  like  to  send  it  her.' 

Dora  went  to  the  table  and  wrote  it  for  him.  Then  he  got  up 
to  go. 

'Upon  my  word,  you  do  look  tired,'  he  broke  out.  'Can't 
you  go  to  bed  ?  It  is  hard  lines. ' 

Which  last  words  applied  to  that  whole  situation  of  hers  with 
her  father  which  he  was  beginning  dimly  to  discern.  In  his  boy- 
ish admiration  and  compassion  he  took  both  her  hands  in  his. 
Dora  withdrew  them  quickly. 

'  Oh,  I'll  pull  through  ! '  she  said,  simply,  and  he  went. 

When  she  had  closed  the  door  after  him  she  stood  looking  at 
the  clock  with  her  hands  clasped  in  front  of  her. 

'  How  much  longer  will  father  be  ? '  she  said,  sighing.  '  Oh,  I 
think  I  told  him  all  Lucy  wanted  me  to  say  ;  I  think  I  did.' 

CHAPTER  X 

THREE  or  four  months  passed  away.  During  that  period  David 
had  built  up  a  shed  in  his  back  yard  and  had  established  a  print- 
ing-press there,  with  a  respectable,  though  not  extensive,  fount 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  239 

of  type — bought,  all  of  it,  secondhand,  and  a  bargain.  John  and 
he  spent  every  available  moment  there,  and  during  their  first 
experiments  would  often  sit  up  half  the  night  working  off  the 
sheets  of  their  earliest  productions,  in  an  excitement  which  took 
no  count  of  fatigue.  They  began  with  reprinting  some  scarce 
local  tracts,  with  which  they  did  well.  Then  David  diverged  into 
a  Radical  pamphlet  or  two  on  the  subject  of  the  coming  Educa- 
tion Bill,  finding  authors  for  them  among  the  leading  ministers 
of  the  town ;  and  these  timely  wares,  being  freely  pushed  on  the 
stall,  on  the  whole  paid  their  expenses,  with  a  little  profit  to 
spare — the  labour  being  reckoned  at  nothing.  And  now  David 
was  beginning  to  cherish  the  dream  of  a  new  history  of  Man- 
chester, for  which  among  his  own  collections  he  already  possessed 
a  great  deal  of  fresh  material.  But  that  would  take  time  and 
money.  He  must  push  his  business  a  bit  further  first. 

That  business,  however,  was  developing  quite  as  rapidly  as  the 
two  pairs  of  arms  could  keep  pace  with  it.  Almost  everything 
the  young  fellow  touched  succeeded.  He  had  instinct,  know- 
ledge, a  growing  tact,  and  an  indomitable  energy,  and  these  are 
the  qualities  which  make,  which  are  in  themselves,  success.  The 
purchase  of  the  collection  at  Cheadle,  bearing  on  the  early  his- 
tory of  American  states  and  towns,  not  only  turned  out  well  in 
itself,  but  brought  him  to  the  notice  of  a  big  man  in  London,  who 
set  the  clever  and  daring  beginner  on  several  large  quests  both  in 
Lancashire  and  Yorkshire  by  which  both  profited  considerably. 
In  another  direction  he  was  extending  his  stock  of  foreign  scien- 
tific and  technical  books,  especially  such  as  bore  upon  the  indus- 
tries of  Northern  England.  Old  Barbier,  who  took  a  warmer  and 
warmer  interest  in  his  pupil's  progress,  kept  him  constantly 
advised  as  to  French  books  through  old  friends  of  his  own  in 
Paris,  who  were  glad  to  do  the  exile  a  kindness. 

'  But  why  not  run  over  to  Paris  for  yourself,  form  some  con- 
nections, and  look  about  you  ? '  suggested  Barbier. 

Why  not,  indeed  ?  The  young  man's  blood,  quick  with  curio- 
sity and  adventure,  under  all  his  tradesman's  exterior,  leapt  at 
the  thought.  But  prudence  restrained  him  for  the  present. 

As  for  German  books,  he  was  struggling  with  the  language, 
and  feeling  his  way  besides  through  innumerable  catalogues. 
How  he  found  time  for  all  the  miscellaneous  acquisitions  of  these 
months  it  would  be  difficult  to  say.  But  whether  in  his  free 
times  or  in  trade-hours  he  was  hardly  ever  without  a  book  or  a 
catalogue  beside  him,  save  when  he  was  working  the  printing 
press  ;  and,  although  his  youth  would  every  now  and  then  break 
out  against  the  confinement  he  imposed  upon  it,  and  drive  him. 
either  to  long  tramps  over  the  moors  on  days  when  the  spring 
stirred  in  the  air,  or  to  a  spell  of  theatre-going,  in  which  Louie 
greedily  shared,  yet,  on  the  whole,  his  force  of  purpose  was 
amazing,  and  the  success  which  it  brought  with  it  could  only  be 
regarded  as  natural  and  inevitable.  He  was  beginning  to  be  well 
known  to  the  old-established  men  in  his  own  business,  who  could 


240  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

not  but  show  at  times  some  natural  jealousy  of  so  quick  a  rise. 
The  story  of  his  relations  to  Purcell  spread,  and  the  two  were 
watched  with  malicious  interest  at  many  a  book-sale,  when  the 
nonchalant  self-reliance  and  prosperous  look  of  the  younger 
drove  the  elder  man  again  and  again  into  futile  attempts  to 
injure  and  circumvent  him.  It  was  noticed  that  never  till  now 
had  Purcell  lost  his  head  with  a  rival. 

Nevertheless,  the  lad  had  far  fewer  enemies  than  might  have 
been  expected.  His  manner  had  always  been  radiantly  self-con- 
fident ;  but  there  was  about  him  a  conspicuous  element  of  quick 
feeling,  of  warm  humanity,  which  grew  rather  than  diminished 
with  his  success.  He  was  frank,  too,  and  did  not  try  to  gloss 
over  a  mistake  or  a  failure.  Perhaps  in  his  lordly  way  he  felt  he 
could  afford  himself  a  few  now  and  then,  he  was  so  much  cle- 
verer than  his  neighbours. 

Upon  no  one  did  David's  development  produce  more  effect 
than  upon  Mr.  Ancrum.  The  lame,  solitary  minister,  who  only 
got  through  liis  week's  self-appointed  tasks  at  a  constant  expense 
of  bodily  torment,  was  dazzled  and  bewildered  by  the  spectacle  of 
so  much  vitality  spent  with  such  ease  and  impunity. 

'  How  many  years  of  Manchester  must  one  give  him  ? '  said 
Ancrum  to  himself  one  night,  when  he  was  making  his  way  home 
from  a  reading  of  the  '  Electra  '  with  David.  '  That  six  hundred 
pounds  has  quickened  the  pace  amazingly  !  Ten  years,  perhaps. 
Then  London,  and  anything  you  like.  Bookselling  slips  into 
publishing,  and  publishing  takes  a  man  into  another  class,  and 
within  reach  of  a  hundred  new  possibilities.  Some  day  I  shall  be 
bragging  of  having  taught  him  !  Taught  him  !  He'll  be  turning 
the  tables  on  me  precious  soon.  Caught  me  out  twice  to-night, 
and  got  through  the  tough  bit  of  the  chorus  much  better  than 
I  did.  How  does  he  do  it  ? — and  with  that  mountain  of  other 
things  on  his  shoulders  !  There's  one  speck  in  the  fruit,  however, 
as  far  as  I  can  see — Miss  Louie  ! ' 

From  the  first  moment  of  his  introduction  to  her,  Ancrum  had 
taken  particular  notice  of  David's  handsome  sister,  who,  on  her 
side,  had  treated  her  old  minister  and  teacher  with  a  most 
thoroughgoing  indifference.  He  saw  that  now,  after  some  three 
months  of  life  together,  the  brother  and  sister  had  developed 
separate  existences,  which  touched  in  two  points  only — a  common 
liking  for  Dora  Lomax,  and  a  common  keenness  for  business. 

Here,  in  this  matter  of  business,  they  were  really  at  one. 
David  kept  nothing  from  her,  and  consulted  her  a  good  deal. 
She  had  the  same  shrewd  head  that  he  had,  and  as  it  was  her 
money  as  well  as  his  that  was  in  question  she  was  determined  to 
know  and  to  understand  what  he  was  after.  Anybody  who  had 
come  upon  the  pair  on  the  nights  when  they  made  up  their 
accounts,  their  dark  heads  touching  under  the  lamp,  might  have 
gone  away  moralising  on  the  charms  of  fraternal  affection. 

And  all  the  while  David  had  once  more  tacitly  given  up  the 
attempt  either  to  love  her  or  to  control  her.  How  indeed  could 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  241 

he  control  her  ?  He  was  barely  two  years  older,  and  she  had  a 
will  of  iron.  She  made  disreputable  friends  whom  he  loathed  the 
sight  of.  But  all  he  could  do  was  to  keep  them  out  of  the  house. 
She  led  John  by  this  time  a  dog's  life.  From  the  temptress  she 
had  become  the  tease  and  tyrant,  and  the  clumsy  fellow,  con- 
sumed with  feverish  passion,  slaved  for  her  whenever  she  was 
near  him  with  hardly  the  reward  of  a  kind  look  or  a  civil  word  in 
a  fortnight.  David  set  his  teeth  and  tried  to  recover  possession 
of  his  friend.  And  as  long  as  they  two  were  at  the  press  or  in 
the  shop  together  alone,  John  was  often  his  old  self,  and  would 
laugh  out  in  the  old  way.  But  no  sooner  did  Louie  appear  than 
he  followed  her  about  like  an  animal,  and  David  could  make 
no  more  of  him.  Whenever  any  dispute,  too,  arose  between  the 
brother  and  sister,  he  took  her  part,  whatever  it  might  be,  with 
an  acrimony  which  pushed  David's  temper  hard. 

Yet,  on  the  whole,  so  Ancrum  thought,  the  brother  showed  a 
wonderful  patience.  He  was  evidently  haunted  by  a  sense  of 
responsibility  towards  his  sister,  and,  at  the  same  time,  both 
tormented  and  humiliated  by  his  incompetence  to  manage  or 
influence  her.  It  was  curious,  too,  to  watch  how  by  antagonism 
and  by  the  constant  friction  of  their  life  together,  certain  quali- 
ties in  her  developed  certain  others  in  him.  Her  callousness,  for 
instance,  did  but  nurture  a  sensitive  humanity  in  him.  She 
treated  the  lodgers  in  the  first  pair  back  with  persistent  indiffer- 
ence and  even  brutality,  seeing  that  Mrs.  Mason  was  a  young, 
helpless  creature  approaching  every  day  nearer  to  a  confinement 
she  regarded  with  terror,  and  that  a  little  common  kindness  from 
the  only  other  woman  in  the  house  could  have  softened  her  lot 
considerably.  But  David's  books  were  stacked  about  in  awkward 
and  inconvenient  places  waiting  for  the  Masons'  departure,  and 
Louie  had  no  patience  with  them — with  the  wife  at  any  rate.  It 
once  or  twice  occurred  to  David  that  if  the  husband,  a  good- 
looking  fellow  and  a  very  hard-worked  shopman,  had  had  more 
hours  at  home,  Louie  would  have  tried  her  blandishments  upon 
him. 

He  on  his  side  was  goaded  by  Louie's  behaviour  into  an 
unusual  complaisance  and  liberality  towards  his  tenants.  Louie 
once  contemptuously  told  him  he  would  make  a  capital  '  general 
help. '  He  was  Mrs.  Mason's  coal-carrier  and  errand-boy  already. 

In  the  same  way  Louie  beat  and  ill-treated  a  half -starved 
collie — one  of  the  short-haired  black  sort  familiar  to  the  shepherd 
of  the  north,  and  to  David  himself  in  his  farm  days — which  would 
haunt  the  shop  and  kitchen.  AVhereupon  David  felt  all  his  heart 
melt  towards  the  squalid,  unhandsome  creature.  He  fed  and 
cherished  it ;  it  slept  on  his  bed  by  night  and  followed  him  by 
day,  he  all  the  while  protecting  it  from  Louie  with  a,  strong  hand. 
And  the  more  evil  was  the  eye  she  cast  upon  the  dog,  who,  accord- 
ing to  her,  possessed  all  the  canine  vices,  the  more  David  loved 
it,  and  the  more  Tim  was  fattened  and  caressed. 

In  another   direction,  too,  the   same   antagonism   appeared. 


242  THE  HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  HOOK  II 

The  sister's  license  of  speech  and  behaviour  towards  the  men  who 
became  her  acquaintances  provoked  in  the  brother  what  often 
seemed  to  Ancrum — who,  of  course,  remembered  Reuben,  and 
had  heard  many  tales  of  old  James  Grieve,  the  lad's  grandfather 
— a  sort  of  Puritan  reaction,  the  reaction  of  his  race  and  stock 
against  'lewdness.'  Louie's  complete  independence,  however, 
and  the  distance  she  preserved  between  his  amusements  and  hers, 
left  David  no  other  weapon  than  sarcasm,  which  he  employed 
freely.  His  fine  sensitive  mouth  took  during  these  weeks  a  curve 
half  mocking,  half  bitter,  which  changed  the  whole  expression  of 
the  face. 

He  saw,  indeed,  with  great  clearness  after  a  month  or  so  that 
Louie's  wildness  was  by  no  means  the  wildness  of  an  ignorant 
innocent,  likely  to  slip  unawares  into  perdition,  and  that,  while 
she  had  a  passionate  greed  for  amusement  and  pleasure,  and  a 
blank  absence  of  principle,  she  was  still  perfectly  alive  to  the 
risks  of  life,  and  meant  somehow  both  to  enjoy  herself  and  to 
steer  herself  through.  But  this  gradual  perception — that,  in  spite 
of  her  mode  of  killing  spare  time,  she  was  not  immediately  likely 
to  take  any  fatal  false  step,  as  he  had  imagined  in  his  first  dread 
— did  but  increase  his  inward  repulsion. 

A  state  of  feeling  which  was  the  more  remarkable  because  he 
himself,  in  Ancrum 's  eyes,  was  at  the  moment  in  a  temper  of 
moral  relaxation  and  bewilderment  !  His  absorption  in  George 
Sand,  and  through  her  in  all  the  other  French  Romantics  whose 
books  he  could  either  find  for  himself  or  borrow  from  Barbier, 
was  carrying  a  ferment  of  passion  and  imagination  through  all 
his  blood.  Most  social  arrangements,  including  marriage, 
seemed  to  have  become  open  questions  to  him.  Why,  then,  this 
tone  towards  Louie  and  her  friends  ?  Was  it  that,  apart  from 
the  influence  of  heredity,  the  young  fellow's  moral  perception  at 
this  time  was  not  ethical  at  all,  but  aesthetic — a  matter  of  taste, 
of  the  presence  or  absence  of  certain  ideal  and  poetic  elements  in 
conduct  ? 

At  any  rate  his  friendship  for  old  Barbier  drew  closer  and 
closer,  and  Ancrum,  who  had  begun  to  feel  a  lively  affection  for 
him,  could  see  but  little  of  him. 

As  to  Barbier,  it  was  a  significant  chance  which  had  thrown 
him  across  David's  path.  In  former  days  this  lively  Frenchman 
had  been  a  small  Paris  journalist,  whom  the  coup  d'etat  had 
struck  down  with  his  betters,  and  who  had  escaped  to  England 
with  one  suit  of  clothes  and  eight  francs  in  his  pocket.  He  re- 
minded himself  on  landing  of  a  cousin  of  his  mother's  settled  as 
a  clerk  in  Manchester,  found  his  way  northwards,  and  had  now, 
for  some  seventeen  years,  been  maintaining  himself  in  the  cotton 
capital,  mainly  by  teaching,  but  partly  by  a  number  of  small  arts 
— ornamental  calligraphy,  wie/m-writing,  and  the  like — too  odd 
and  various  for  description.  He  was  a  fanatic,  a  Red,  much 
possessed  by  political  hatreds  which  gave  savour  to  an  existence 
otherwise  dull  and  peaceable  enough.  Religious  beliefs  were 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  243 

very  scarce  with  him,  but  he  had  a  certain  literary  creed,  the 
creed  of  1830,  when  he  had  been  a  scribbler  in  the  train  of  Victor 
Hugo,  which  he  did  his  best  to  put  into  David. 

He  was  a  formidable-looking  person,  six  feet  in  height,  and 
broad  in  proportion,  with  bushy  white  eyebrows,  and  a  mouth 
made  hideous  by  two  projecting  teeth.  In  speech  he  hated  Eng- 
land and  all  her  ways,  and  was  for  ever  yearning  towards  the 
misguided  and  yet  unequalled  country  which  had  cast  him  out. 
In  heart  he  was  perfectly  aware  that  England  is  free  as  not  even 
Republican  France  is  free  ;  and  he  was  also  sufficiently  alive  to 
the  fact  that  he  had  made  himself  a  very  tolerable  niche  in  Man- 
chester, and  was  pleasantly  regarded  there — at  least,  in  certain 
circles — as  an  oracle  of  French  opinion,  a  commodity  which,  in  a 
great  commercial  centre,  may  at  any  time  have  a  cash  value.  He 
could,  in  truth,  have  long  ago  revisited  la  patrie  had  he  had  a 
mind,  for  governments  are  seldom  vindictive  in  the  case  of  people 
who  can  clearly  do  them  no  harm.  This,  however,  was  not  at  all 
his  own  honest  view  of  the  matter.  In  the  mirror  of  the  mind 
he  saw  himself  perpetually  draped  in  the  pathos  of  exile  and  the 
dignity  of  persecution,  and  the  phrases  by  which  he  was  wont  to 
impress  this  inward  vision  on  the  brutal  English  sense  had  be- 
come, in  the  course  of  years,  an  effective  and  touching  habit  with 
him. 

David  had  been  Barbier's  pupil  in  the  first  instance  at  one  of 
the  classes  of  the  Mechanics'  Institute.  Never  in  Barbier's 
memory  had  any  Manchester  lad  so  applied  himself  to  learn 
French  before.  And  when  the  boy's  knowledge  of  the  Encyclo- 
paedists came  out,  and  he  one  day  put  the  master  right  in  class 
on  some  points  connected  with  Diderot's  relations  to  Kousseau, 
the  ex-journalist  gaped  with  astonishment,  and  then  went  home 
and  read  up  his  facts,  half  enraged  and  half  enraptured.  David's 
zeal  piqued  him,  made  him  a  better  Frenchman  and  a  better 
teacher  than  he  had  been  for  years.  He  was  a  vain  man,  and 
David's  capacities  put  him  on  his  mettle. 

Very  soon  he  and  the  lad  had  become  intimate.  He  had 
described  to  David  the  first  night  of  Hernani,  when  he  had  been 
one  of  the  long-haired  band  of  rapins,  who  came  down  in  their 
scores  to  the  Theatre  Francais  to  defend  their  chief,  Hugo, 
against  the  hisses  of  the  Philistine.  The  two  were  making  coffee 
in  Barbier's  attic,  at  the  top  of  a  side  street  off  the  Oxford  Eoad, 
When  these  memories  seized  upon  the  old  Eomantic.  He  took  up 
the  empty  coffee-pot,  and  brandished  it  from  side  to  side  as 
though  it  had  been  the  sword  of  Hernani ;  the  miserable  Academy 
hugging  its  Moliere  and  Racine  fled  before  him  ;  the  world  was 
once  more  regenerate,  and  Hugo  its  high  priest.  Passages  from 
the  different  parts  welled  to  his  old  lips  ;  he  gave  the  play  over 
again — the  scene  between  the  lover  and  the  husband,  where  the 
husband  lays  down  the  strange  and  sinister  penalty  to  which  the 
lover  submits — the  exquisite  love-scene  in  the  fifth  act — and  the 
cry  of  agonised  passion  with  which  Dona  Sol  defends  her  love 


244  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

against  his  executioner.  All  these  things  he  declaimed,  stump- 
ing up  and  down,  till  the  terrified  landlady  rose  out  of  her  bed  to 
remonstrate,  and  got  the  door  locked  in  her  face  for  her  pains, 
and  till  the  bourgeois  baby  in  the  next  room  woke  up  and  roared, 
and  so  put  an  abrupt  end  to  the  performance.  Old  Barbier  sat 
down  swearing,  poked  the  fire  furiously,  and  then,  taking  out  a 
huge  red  handkerchief,  wiped  his  brow  with  a  trembling  hand. 
His  stiff  white  hair,  parted  on  either  temple,  bristled  like  a  high 
toupie  over  his  round,  black  eyes,  which  glowed  behind  his  spec- 
tacles. And  meanwhile  the  handsome  boy  sat  opposite,  glad  to 
laugh  by  way  of  reaction,  but  at  bottom  stirred  by  the  same  emo- 
tion, and  ready  to  share  in  the  same  adorations. 

Gradually  David  learnt  his  way  about  this  bygone  world  of 
Barbier's  recollection.  A  vivid  picture  sprang  up  in  him  of  these 
strange  leaders  of  a  strange  band,  these  cadaverous  poets  and 
artists  of  Louis  Philippe's  early  days, — beings  in  love  with  Lord 
Byron  and  suicide,  having  Art  for  God,  and  Hugo  for  prophet, 
talking  of  were-wolves,  vampires,  cathedrals,  sunrises,  forests, 
passion  and  despair,  hatted  like  brigands,  cloaked  after  Vandyke, 
curled  like  Absalom,  making  new  laws  unto  themselves  in  verse 
as  in  morals,  and  leaving  all  petty  talk  of  duty  or  common  sense 
to  the  Academy  and  the  nursery. 

George  Sand  walking  the  Paris  quays  in  male  dress — George 
Sand  at  Fontainebleau  roaming  the  midnight  forest  with  Alfred 
de  Musset,  or  wintering  with  her  dying  musician  among  the 
mountains  of  Palma ;  Gerard  de  Nerval,  wanderer,  poet,  and 
suicide ;  Alfred  de  Musset  flaming  into  verse  at  dead  of  night 
amid  an  answering  and  spendthrift  blaze  of  wax  candles ; 
Baudelaire's  blasphemies  and  eccentricities — these  characters 
and  incidents  Barbier  wove  into  endless  highly  coloured  tales,  to 
which  David  listened  with  perpetual  relish. 

'  Mon  Dieu  !  Mon  Dieu  !  What  times  !  What  memories  ! ' 
the  old  Frenchman  would  cry  at  last,  fairly  re-transported  to  the 
world  of  his  youth,  and,  springing  up,  he  would  run  to  the  little 
cupboard  by  his  bed  head,  where  he  kept  a  score  or  so  of  little 
paper  volumes — volumes  which  the  tradesman  David  soon  dis- 
covered, from  a  curious  study  of  French  catalogues,  to  have  a 
fast-rising  money  value — and  out  would  come  Alfred  de  Musset's 
'  Nuit  de  Mai,'  or  an  outrageous  verse  from  Baudelaire,  or  an 
harmonious  nothing  from  Gautier.  David  gradually  learnt  to 
follow,  to  understand,  to  range  all  that  he  heard  in  a  mental 
setting  of  his  own.  The  France  of  his  imagination  indeed  was  a 
strange  land  !  Everybody  in  it  was  either  girding  at  priests  like 
Voltaire,  or  dying  for  love  like  George  Sand's  Stenio. 

But  whether  the  picture  was  true  to  life  or  no,  it  had  a  very 
strongly  marked  effect  on  the  person  conceiving  it.  Just  as  the 
speculative  complexion  of  his  first  youth  had  been  decided  by  the 
chance  which  brought  him  into  daily  contact  with  the  French 
eighteenth  century — for  no  self-taught  solitary  boy  of  quick  and 
covetous  mind  can  read  Voltaire  continuously  without  bearing  the 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  245 

marks  of  him  henceforward — so  in  the  same  way,  when  he  passed, 
as  France  had  done  before  him,  from  the  philosophers  to  the 
Romantics,  this  constant  preoccupation  with  the  French  literature 
of  passion  in  its  romantic  and  idealist  period  left  deep  and  lasting 
results. 

The  strongest  of  these  results  lay  in  the  realm  of  moral  and 
social  sense.  What  struck  the  lad's  raw  mind  with  more  and 
more  force  as  he  gathered  his  French  books  about  him  was  the 
profound  gulf  which  seemed  to  divide  the  average  French  concep- 
tion of  the  relation  between  the  sexes  from  the  average  English  one. 
In  the  French  novels  he  read  every  young  man  had  his  mistress  ; 
every  married  woman  her  lover.  Tragedy  frequently  arose  out 
of  these  relations,  but  that  the  relations  must  and  did  obtain,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  was  assumed.  For  the  delightful  heroes  and 
heroines  of  a  whole  range  of  fiction,  from  '  Manon  Lescaut '  down 
to  Murger's  '  Vie  de  Boheme,'  marriage  did  not  apparently  exist, 
even  as  a  matter  of  argument.  And  as  to  the  duties  of  the 
married  woman,  when  she  passed  on  to  the  canvas,  the  code  was. 
equally  simple.  The  husband  might  kill  his  wife's  lover — that 
was  in  the  game  ;  but  the  young  man's  right  to  be  was  as  good 
as  his  own.  '  JNb  human  being  can  control  love,  and  no  one  is  to 
blame  either  for  feeling  it  or  for  losing  it.  What  alone  degrades 
a  woman  is  falsehood."1  So  says  the  husband  in  George  Sand's 
'  Jacques '  when  he  is  just  about  to  fling  himself  down  an  Alpine 
precipice  that  his  wife  and  Octave  may  have  their  way  undis- 
turbed. And  all  the  time,  what  poetry  and  passion  in  the 
presentation  of  these  things  !  Beside  them  the  mere  remembrance 
of  English  ignorance,  prudishness,  and  conventionality  would  set 
the  lad  swelling,  as  he  read,  with  a  sense  of  superior  scorn,  and 
of  wild  sympathy  for  a  world  in  which  love  and  not  law,  truth 
and  not  legal  fiction,  were  masters  of  human  relations. 

Some  little  time  after  Reuben's  visit  to  him  he  one  day  told 
Barbier  the  fact  of  his  French  descent.  Barbier  declared  that  he 
had  always  known  it,  had  always  realised  something  in  David 
distinct  from  the  sluggish  huckstering  English  temper.  Why, 
David's  mother  was  from  the  south  of  France  ;  his  own  family 
came  from  Carcassonne.  No  doubt  the  rich  Gascon  blood  ran  in 
both  their  veins.  Salut  au  compatriote  ! 

Thenceforward  there  was  a  greater  solidarity  between  the  two- 
than  ever.  Barbier  fell  into  an  incessant  gossip  of  Paris — the 
Paris  of  Louis  Philippe — reviving  memories  and  ways  of  speech 
which  had  been  long  dead  in  him,  and  leaving  on  David's  mind 
the  impression  of  a  place  where  life  was  from  morning  till  night 
amusement,  exhilaration,  and  seduction  ;  where,  under  the  bright 
smokeless  sky,  and  amid  the  stateliest  streets  and  public  buildings 
in  Europe,  men  were  always  witty  and  women  always  attractive. 

Meanwhile  the  course  of  business  during  the  spring  months 
and  the  rise  of  his  trade  in  foreign  books  rapidly  brought  the 
scheme  of  a  visit  to  France,  which  had  been  at  first  a  mere  dream 
and  fancy,  within  the  region  of  practical  possibility,  and  even 


246  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  H 

advantage,  for  the  young  bookseller.  Two  things  he  was  set  on. 
If  he  went  he  was  determined  to  go  under  such  conditions  as 
would  enable  him  to  see  French  life — especially  French  artistic 
and  student  life — from  the  inside.  And  he  saw  with  some  clear- 
ness that  he  would  have  to  take  his  sister  with  him. 

Against  the  latter  notion  Barbier  protested  vehemently. 

'  What  do  you  want  to  tie  yourself  to  a  petticoat  for  ?  If  you 
take  the  girl  you  will  have  to  look  after  her.  Paris,  my  boy,  let 
me  inform  you,  is  not  the  best  place  in  the  world  for  la  jeune 
personne;  and  the  Paris  rapin  may  be  an  amusing  scoundrel,  but 
don't  trust  him  with  young  women  if  you  can  help  it.  Leave 
Mademoiselle  Louie  at  home,  and  let  her  mind  the  shop.  Get 
Mademoiselle  Dora  or  some  one  to  stay  with  her,  or  send  her  to 
Mademoiselle  Dora.' 

So  said  the  Frenchman  with  sharp  dictatorial  emphasis.  What 
a  preposterous  suggestion  ! 

'  I  can't  stop  her  coming,'  said  David,  quietly — '  if  she  wants 
to  come — and  she'll  be  sure  to  want.  Besides,  I'll  not  leave  her 
alone  at  home,  and  she'll  not  let  me  send  her  anywhere — you  may 
be  sure  of  that. ' 

The  Frenchman  stared  and  stormed.  David  fell  silent.  Louie 
was  what  she  was,  and  it  was  no  use  discussing  her.  At  last 
Barbier,  being  after  all  tolerably  well  acquainted  with  the  lad's 
relations  to  his  sister,  came  to  a  sudden  end  of  his  rhetoric,  and 
began  to  think  out  something  practicable. 

That  evening  he  wrote  to  a  nephew  of  his  living  as  an  artist  in 
the  Quartier  Montmartre.  Some  months  before  Barbier's  vanity 
had  been  flattered  by  an  adroit  letter  from  this  young  gentleman, 
written,  if  the  truth  were  known,  at  a  moment  when  a  pecuniary 
situation,  pinched  almost  beyond  endurance,  had  made  it  seem 
worth  while  to  get  his  uncle's  address  out  of  his  widowed  mother. 
Barbier,  a  bachelor,  and  a  man  of  some  small  savings,  perfectly 
understood  why  he  had  been  approached,  and  had  been  none  the 
less  extraordinarily  glad  to  hear  from  the  youth.  He  was  a 
rapin  ?  well  and  good  ;  all  the  great  men  had  been  rapins  before 
him.  Very  likely  he  had  the  rapines  characteristic  vices  and  dis- 
tractions. All  the  world  knew  what  the  life  meant  for  nine  men 
out  of  ten.  What  was  the  use  of  preaching  ?  Youth  was  youth. 
Clearly  the  old  man — himself  irreproachable — would  have  been 
disappointed  not  to  find  his  nephew  a  sad  dog  on  personal 
acquaintance. 

'  Tell  me,  Xavier,'  his  letter  ran,  '  how  to  put  a  young  friend 
of  mine  in  the  way  of  seeing  something  of  Paris  and  Paris  life, 
more  than  your  fool  of  a  tourist  generally  sees.  He  is  a  book- 
seller, and  will,  of  course,  mind  his  trade  ;  but  he  is  a  young  man 
of  taste  and  intelligence  besides,  and  moreover  half  French.  It 
would  be  a  pity  that  he  should  visit  Paris  as  any  sacr£  British 
Philistine  does.  Advise  me  where  to  place  him.  He  would  like  to 
see  something  of  your  artist's  life.  But  mind  this,  young  man, 
he  brings  a  sister  with  him  as  handsome  as  the  devil,  and  not 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  247 

much  easier  to  manage  :  so  if  you  do  advise — no  tricks — tell  me  of 
something  convenable. ' 

A  few  days  later  Barbier  appeared  in  Potter  Street  just  after 
David  had  put  up  the  shutters,  announcing  that  he  had  a  proposal 
to  make. 

David  unlocked  the  shop-door  and  let  him  in.  Barbier  looked 
round  with  some  amazement  on  the  small  stuffy  place,  piled  to 
bursting  by  now  with  books  of  every  kind,  which  only  John's 
herculean  efforts  could  keep  in  passable  order. 

'  Why  don't  you  house  yourself  better — liein  ? '  said  the 
Frenchman.  '  A  business  growing  like  this,  and  nothing  but  a 
den  to  handle  it  in  I ' 

'  I  shall  be  all  right  when  I  get  my  other  room,'  said  David 
composedly.  '  Couldn't  turn  out  the  lodger  before.  The  woman 
was  only  confined  last  week.' 

And  as  he  spoke  the  wailing  of  an  infant  and  a  skurrying  of 
feet  were  heard  upstairs. 

'  So  it  seems,'  said  Barbier,  adjusting  his  spectacles  in  bewil- 
derment. l  Jesus!  "What  an  affair!  What  did  you  permit  it 
for  ?  Why  didn't  you  turn  her  out  in  time  ? ' 

'  I  would  have  turned  myself  out  first,'  said  David.  He  was 
lounging,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  against  the  books  ;  but 
though  his  attitude  was  nonchalant,  his  tone  had  a  vibrating 
energy. 

'  Barbier ! ' 

'  Yes.' 

'  What  do  women  suffer  for  like  that  ? ' 

The  young  man's  eyes  glowed,  and  his  lips  twitched  a  little, 
as  though  some  poignant  remembrance  were  at  his  heart. 

Barbier  looked  at  him  with  some  curiosity. 

'  Ask  le  bon  Dieu  and  Mother  Eve,  my  friend.  It  lies  between 
them,'  said  the  old  scoffer,  with  a  shrug. 

David  looked  away  in  silence.  On  his  quick  mind,  greedy  of 
all  human  experience,  the  night  of  Mrs.  Mason's  confinement, 
with  its  sounds  of  anguish  penetrating  through  all  the  upper 
rooms  of  the  thin,  ill-built  house,  had  left  an  ineffaceable  impres- 
sion of  awe  and  terror.  In  the  morning,  when  all  was  safely 
over,  he  came  down  to  the  kitchen  to  find  the  husband — a  man 
some  two  or  three  years  older  than  himself,  and  the  smart  fore- 
man of  an  ironmongery  shop  in  Deansgate — crouching  over  a  bit 
of  fire.  The  man  was  too  much  excited  to  apologise  for  his 
presence  in  the  Grieves'  room.  David  shyly  asked  him  a  question 
about  his  wife. 

'  Oh,  it's  all  right,  the  doctor  says.  There's  the  nurse  with 
her,  and  your  sister's  got  the  baby.  She'll  do  ;  but,  oh,  my  God  ! 
it's  awful — it's  awful  '.  My  poor  Liz  !  Give  me  a  corner  here, 
will  you  !  I'm  all  upset  like.' 

David  had  got  some  food  out  of  the  cupboard,  made  him  eat 
it,  and  chatted  to  him  till  the  man  was  more  himself  again.  But 


248  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

the  crying  of  the  new-born  child  overhead,  together  with  the 
shaken  condition  of  this  clever,  self-reliant  young  fellow,  so  near 
his  own  age,  seemed  for  the  moment  to  introduce  the  lad  to  new 
and  unknown  regions  of  human  feeling. 

While  these  images  were  pursuing  each  other  through  David's 
mind,  Barbier  was  poking  among  his  foreign  books,  which  lay, 
backs  upwards,  on  the  floor  to  one  side  of  the  counter. 

'  Do  you  sell  them — hein  ? '  he  said,  looking  up  and  pointing 
to  them  with  his  stick. 

'Yes.  Especially  the  scientific  books.  These  are  an  order. 
So  is  that  batch.  Napoleon  III.'s  "  Caesar,"  isn't  it?  And  those 
over  there  are  "on  spec."  Oh,  I  could  do  something  if  I  knew 
more  !  There's  a  man  over  at  Oldham.  One  of  the  biggest 
weaving-sheds — cotton  velvets — that  kind  of  thing.  He's  awfully 
rich,  and  he's  got  a  French  library ;  a  big  one,  I  believe.  He 
came  in  here  yesterday.  I  think  I  could  make  something  out  of 
him  ;  but  he  wants  all  sorts  of  rum  things — last-century  memoirs, 
out-of-the-way  ones — everything  about  Montaigne — first  editions 
— Lord  knows  what !  I  say,  Barbier,  I  dare  say  he'd  buy  your 
books.  "What  '11  you  let  me  have  them  for  ? ' 

'  Diantre  !  Not  for  your  heart's  blood,  my  young  man.  It  's 
like  your  impudence  to  ask.  You  could  sell  more  if  you  knew 
more,  you  think  ?  Well  now  listen  to  me.' 

The  Frenchman  sat  down,  adjusted  his  spectacles,  and,  taking 
a  letter  from  his  pocket,  read  it  with  deliberation. 

It  was  from  the  nephew,  Xavier  Dubois,  in  answer  to  his 
uncle's  inquiries.  Nothing,  the  writer  declared,  could  have  been 
more  opportune.  He  himself  was  just  off  to  Belgium,  where  a 
friend  had  procured  him  a  piece  of  work  on  a  new  Government 
building.  Why  should  not  his  uncle's  friends  inhabit  his  rooms 
during  his  absence  ?  He  must  keep  them  on,  and  would  find  it 
very  convenient,  that  being  so,  that  some  one  should  pay  the 
rent.  There  was  his  studio,  which  was  bare,  no  doubt,  but 'quite 
habitable,  and  a  little  cabinet  de  toilette,  adjoining,  and  shut  off, 
containing  a  bed  and  all  necessaries.  Why  should  not  the  sister 
take  the  bedroom,  and  let  the  brother  camp  somehow  in  the 
studio  ?  He  could  no  doubt  borrow  a  bed  from  some  friend  before 
they  came,  and  with  a  large  screen,  which  was  one  of  the  '  studio 
properties,'  a  very  tolerable  sleeping  room  could  be  improvised, 
and  still  leave  a  good  deal  of  the  studio  free.  He  understood 
that  his  uncle's  friends  were  not  looking  for  luxury.  But  le 
stride  necessaire  he  could  provide. 

Meanwhile  the  Englishman  and  his  sister  would  find  themselves 
at  once  in  the  artists'  circle,  and  might  see  as  much  or  as  little  as 
they  liked  of  artistic  life.  He  (Dubois)  could  of  course  give  them 
introductions.  There  was  a  sculptor,  for  instance,  on  the  ground 
floor,  a  man  of  phenomenal  genius,  joli  garpon  besides,  who 
would  certainly  show  himself  aimaUe  for  anybody  introduced  by 
Dubois ;  and  on  the  floor  above  there  was  a  landscape  painter, 
ancien  prix  de  Rome,  and  his  wife,  who  would  also,  no  doubt, 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  24U 

make  themselves  agreeable,  and  to  whom  the  brother  and  sister 
might  go  for  all  necessary  information — Dubois  would  see  to  that. 
Sixty  francs  a  month  paid  the  appartement ;  a  trifle  for  service 
if  you  desired  it — there  was,  however,  no  compulsion — to  the 
concierge  would  make  you  comfortable  ;  and  as  for  your  food,  the 
Quartier  Montmartre  abounded  in  cheap  restaurants,  and  you 
might  live  as  you  pleased  for  one  franc  a  day  or  twenty.  He 
suggested  that  on  the  whole  no  better  opening  was  likely  to  be 
found  by  two  young  persons  of  spirit,  anxious  to  see  Paris  from 
the  inside. 

'Now  then,'  said  Barbier,  taking  off  his  spectacles  with  an 
authoritative  click,  as  he  shut  up  the  letter,  '  decide-toi.  Go  ! — 
and  look  about  you  for  a  fortnight.  Improve  your  French  ;  get 
to  know  some  of  the  Paris  bookmen  ;  take  some  commissions  out 
with  you — buy  there  to  the  best  advantage,  and  come  back  twenty 
per  cent,  better  informed  than  when  you  set  out.' 

He  smote  his  hands  upon  his  knees  with  energy.  He  had  a 
love  of  management  and  contrivance ;  and  the  payment  of 
Eugene's  rent  for  him  during  his  absence  weighed  with  his  frugal 
mind. 

David  stood  twisting  his  mouth  in  silence  a  moment,  his  head 
thrown  back  against  the  books. 

'Well,  I  don't  see  why  not,'  he  said  at  last,  his  eyes  sparkling. 

'And  take  notice,  my  friend,'  said  Barbier,  tapping  the  open 
letter,  '  the  ancien  prix  de  Rome  has  a  wife.  Where  wives  are 
young  women  can  go.  Xavier  can  prepare  the  way,  and,  if  you 
play  your  cards  well,  you  can  get  Mademoiselle  Louie  taken  off 
your  hands  while  you  go  about.' 

David  nodded.  He  was  sitting  astride  on  the  counter,  his 
face  shining  with  the  excitement  he  was  now  too  much  of  a  man 
to  show  with  the  old  freedom. 

Suddenly  there  was  a  sound  of  wild  voices  from  the  inside 
room. 

'  Miss  Grieve  !  Miss  Grieve  !  don't  you  take  that  child  away. 
Bring  it  back,  I  say  ;  I'll  go  to  your  brother,  I  will ! ' 

'  That's  Mrs.  Mason's  nurse,'  said  David,  springing  off  the 
counter.  '  What's  up  now  ? ' 

He  threw  open  the  door  into  the  kitchen,  just  as  Louie  swept 
into  the  room  from  the  other  side.  She  had  a  white  bundle  in  her 
arms,  and  her  face  was  flushed  with  a  sly  triumph.  After  her 
ran  the  stout  woman  who  was  looking  after  Mrs.  Mason,  purple 
with  indignation. 

'  Now  look  yo  here,  Mr.  Grieve,'  she  cried  at  sight  of  David, 
'  I  can't  stand  it,  and  I  won't.  Am  I  in  charge  of  Mrs.  Mason  or 
am  I  not  ?  Here  's  Miss  Grieve,  as  soon  as  my  back  's  turned,  as 
soon  as  I've  laid  that  blessed  baby  in  its  cot  as  quiet  as  a  lamb — 
and  it  's  been  howling  since  three  o'clock  this  morning,  as  yo 
know — in  she  whips,  claws  it  out  of  its  cradle,  and  is  off  wi'  it, 
Lord  knows  where.  Thank  the  Lord,  Mrs.  Mason's  asleep  !  If 
she  weren't,  she'd  have  a  fit.  She's  feart  to  death  o'  Miss  Grieve. 


250  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  n 

We  noather  on  us  know  what  to  make  on  her.  She's  like  a  wild 
thing  soomtimes — not  a  human  creetur  at  aw — Gie  me  that  chilt, 
I  tell  tha  ! ' 

Louie  vouchsafed  no  answer.  She  sat  down  composedly  before 
the  fire,  and,  cradling  the  still  sleeping  child  on  her  knee,  she 
bent  over  it  examining  its  waxen  hands  and  tiny  feet  with  an 
eager  curiosity.  The  nurse,  who  stood  over  her  trembling  with 
anger,  and  only  deterred  from  snatching  the  child  away  by  the 
fear  of  wakening  it,  might  have  been  talking  to  the  wall. 

'  Now,  look  here,  Louie,  what  d'  you  do  that  for  ? '  said  David, 
remonstrating  ;  '  why  can't  you  leave  the  child  alone  ?  You'll  be 
putting  Mrs.  Mason  in  a  taking,  and  that  '11  do  her  harm. ' 

'  Nowt  o'  t'  sort,'  said  Louie  composedly,  '  it  's  that  woman 
there  '11  wake  her  with  screeching.  She's  asleep,  and  the  baby's 
asleep,  and  I'm  taking  care  of  it.  Why  can't  Mrs.  Bury  go  and 
look  after  Mrs.  Mason  ?  She  hasn't  swept  her  room  this  two  days, 
and  it 's  a  sight  to  see.' 

Pricked  in  a  tender  point,  Mrs.  Bury  broke  out  again  into  a 
stream  of  protest  and  invective,  only  modified  by  her  fear  of 
waking  her  patient  upstairs,  and  interrupted  by  appeals  to  David. 
But  whenever  she  came  near  to  take  the  baby  Louie  put  her 
hands  over  it,  and  her  wide  black  eyes  shot  out  intimidating 
flames  before  which  the  aggressor  invariably  fell  back. 

Attracted  by  the  fight,  Barbier  had  come  up  to  look,  and  now 
stood  by  the  shop-door,  riveted  by  Louie's  strange  beauty.  She 
wore  the  same  black  and  scarlet  dress  in  which  she  had  made  her 
first  appearance  in  Manchester.  She  now  never  wore  it  out  of 
doors,  her  quick  eye  having  at  once  convinced  her  that  it  was  not 
in  the  fashion.  But  the  instinct  which  had  originally  led  her  to 
contrive  it  was  abundantly  justified  whenever  she  still  conde- 
scended to  put  it  on,  so  startling  a  relief  it  lent  to  the  curves  of 
her  slim  figure,  developed  during  the  last  two  years  of  growth  to 
all  womanly  roundness  and  softness,  and  to  the  dazzling  colour  of 
her  dark  head  and  thin  face.  As  she  sat  by  the  fire,  the  white 
bundle  on  her  knee,  one  pointed  foot  swinging  in  front  of  her, 
now  hanging  over  the  baby,  and  now  turning  her  bright  danger- 
ous look  and  compressed  lips  on  Mrs.  Bury,  she  made  a  peculiar 
witch-like  impression  on  Barbier  which  thrilled  his  old  nerves 
agreeably.  It  was  clear,  he  thought,  that  the  girl  wanted  a  hus- 
band and  a  family  of  her  own.  Otherwise  why  should  she  run 
off  with  other  people's  children  ?  But  he  would  be  a  bold  man 
who  ventured  on  her  ! 

David,  at  last  seeing  that  Louie  was  in  the  mood  to  tear  the 
babe  asunder  rather  than  give  it  up,  with  difficulty  induced  Mrs. 
Bury  to  leave  her  in  possession  for  half  an  hour,  promising  that, 
as  soon  as  the  mother  woke,  the  child  should  be  given  back. 

'If  I've  had  enough  of  it,'  Louie  put  in,  as  a  saving  clause, 
luckily  just  too  late  to  bo  heard  by  the  nurse,  who  had  sulkily 
closed  the  door  behind  her,  declaring  that '  sich  an  owdacious  chit 
she  never  saw  in  her  born  days,  and  niver  heerd  on  one  oather.' 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  251 

David  and  Barbier  went  back  into  the  shop  to  talk,  leaving 
Louie  to  her  nursing.  As  soon  as  she  was  alone  she  laid  back  the 
flannel  which  lay  round  the  child's  head,  and  examined  every 
inch  of  its  downy  poll  and  puckered  face,  her  warm  breath 
making  the  tiny  lips  twitch  in  sleep  as  it  travelled  across  them. 
Then  she  lifted  the  little  nightgown  and  looked  at  the  pink  feet 
nestling  in  their  flannel  wrapping.  A  glow  sprang  into  her 
cheek  ;  her  great  eyes  devoured  the  sleeping  creature.  Its  weak- 
ness and  helplessness,  its  plasticity  to  anything  she  might  choose 
to  do  with  it,  seemed  to  intoxicate  her.  She  looked  round  her 
furtively,  then  bent  and  laid  a  hot  covetous  kiss  on  the  small 
clenched  hand.  The  child  moved ;  had  it  been  a  little  older  it 
would  have  wakened  ;  but  Louie,  hastily  covering  it  up,  began  to 
rock  it  and  sing  to  it. 

The  door  into  the  shop  was  ajar.  As  David  and  Barbier  were 
hanging  together  over  a  map  of  Paris  which  David  had  hunted 
out  of  his  stores,  Barbier  suddenly  threw  up  his  head  with  a  queer 
look. 

'  What 's  that  she's  singing  ?'  he  said  quickly. 

He  got  up  hastily,  overturning  his  stool  as  he  did  so,  and  went 
to  the  door  to  listen. 

'I  haven't  heard  that,'  he  said,  with  some  agitation,  'since 
my  father's  sister  used  to  sing  it  me  when  I  was  a  small  lad,  up 
at  Augoumat  in  the  mountains  near  Puy  ! ' 

Sur  le  pont  d 'Avignon 
Tout  le  inonde  y  danse  en  rond  ; 
Les  beaux  messieurs  font  comme  ca, 
.  Les  beaux  messieurs  font  comme  £a. 

The  words  were  but  just  distinguishable  as  Louie  sang.  They 
were  clipped  and  mutilated  as  by  one  who  no  longer  understood 
what  they  meant.  But  the  intonation  was  extraordinarily 
French,  French  of  the  South,  and  Barbier  could  hardly  stand 
still  under  it. 

'  Where  did  you  learn  that  ? '  he  called  to  her  from  the  door. 

The  girl  stopped  and  looked  at  him  with  her  bright  bird-like 
glance.  But  she  made  no  reply. 

'  Did  your  mother  teach  it  you  ? '  he  asked,  coming  in. 

'  I  suppose  so,'  she  said  indifferently. 

'  Can  you  talk  any  French — do  you  remember  it  ? ' 

'No.' 

'  But  you'd  soon  learn.  You  haven't  got  the  English  mouth, 
that's  plain.  Do  you  know  your  brother  thinks  of  taking  you  to 
Paris  ? ' 

She  started. 

'  He  don't,'  she  said  laconically. 

'  Oh,  don't  he.     Just  ask  him  then  ? ' 

Ten  minutes  later  Louie  had  been  put  in  possession  of  the 
situation.  As  David  had  fully  expected,  she  took  no  notice  what- 
ever of  his  suggestion  that  after  all  she  might  not  care  to  come. 


252  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE  BOOK  II 

They  might  be  rough  quarters,  he  said,  and  queer  people  about ; 
and  it  would  cost  a  terrible  deal  more  for  two  than  one.  Should 
he  not  ask  Dora  Lomax  to  take  her  in  for  a  fortnight  ?  John,  of 
course,  would  look  after  the  shop.  He  spoke  under  the  pressure 
of  a  sudden  qualm,  knowing  it  would  be  no  use  ;  but  his  voice  had 
almost  a  note  of  entreaty  in  it. 

'  When  do  you  want  to  be  starting  ? '  she  asked  him  sharply. 
*  I'll  not  go  to  Dora's — so  you  needn't  talk  o'  that.  You  can  take 
the  money  out  of  what  you'll  be  owing  me  next  month. ' 

Her  nostrils  dilated  as  the  quick  breath  passed  through  them. 
Barbier  was  fascinated  by  the  extraordinary  animation  of  the 
face,  and  could  not  take  his  eyes  off  her. 

'Not  for  a  fortnight,'  said  David  reluctantly,  answering  her 
question.  '  Barbier's  letter  says  about  the  tenth  of  May.  There's 
two  country  sales  I  must  go  to,  and  some  other  things  to  settle. ' 

She  nodded. 

'Well,  then,  I  can  get  some  things  ready,'  she  said  half  to 
herself,  staring  across  the  baby  into  the  fire. 

When  David  and  Barbier  were  gone  together  'up  street,'  still 
talking  over  their  plans,  Louie  leapt  to  her  feet  and  laid  the  baby 
down — carelessly,  as  though  she  no  longer  cared  anything  at  all 
about  it — in  the  old-fashioned  arm-chair  wherein  David  spent  so 
many  midnight  vigils.  Then  locking  her  hands  behind  her,  she 
paced  up  and  down  the  narrow  room  with  the  springing  gait,  the 
impetuous  feverish  grace,  of  some  prisoned  animal.  Paris  !  Her 
education  was  small,  and  her  ignorance  enormous.  But  in  the 
columns  of  a  '  lady's  paper '  she  had  often  bought  from  the  station 
bookstall  at  Clough  End  she  had  devoured  nothing  more  eagerly 
than  the  Paris  letter,  with  its  luscious  descriptions  of  '  Paris 
fashions,'  whereby  even  Lancashire  women,  even  Clough  End 
mill-hands  in  their  Sunday  best,  were  darkly  governed  from  afar. 
All  sorts  of  bygone  dreams  recurred  to  her — rich  and  subtle 
combinations  of  silks,  satins,  laces,  furs,  imaginary  glories  cloth- 
ing an  imaginary  Louie  Grieve.  The  remembrance  of  them  filled 
her  with  a  greed  past  description,  and  she  forthwith  conceived 
Paris  as  a  place  all  shops,  each  of  them  superior  to  the  best  in 
St.  Ann's  Square — where  one  might  gloat  before  the  windows  all 
day. 

She  made  a  spring  to  the  door,  and  ran  upstairs  to  her  own 
room.  There  she  began  to  pull  out  her  dresses  and  scatter  them 
about  the  floor,  looking  at  them  with  a  critical  discontented  eye. 

Time  passed.  She  was  standing  absorbed  before  an  old  gown, 
planning  out  its  renovation,  when  a  howl  arose  from  downstairs. 
She  fled  like  a  roe  deer,  and  pounced  upon  the  baby  just  in  time 
to  checkmate  Mrs.  Bury,  who  was  at  her  heels. 

Quite  regardless  of  the  nurse's  exasperation  with  her,  first  for 
leaving  the  child  alone,  half  uncovered,  in  a  chilly  room,  and  now 
for  again  withholding  it,  Louie  put  the  little  creature  against  her 
neck,  rocking  and  crooning  to  it.  The  sudden  warm  contact 
stilled  the  baby  ;  it  rubbed  its  head  into  the  soft  hollow  thus  pre- 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  253 

sented  to  it,  and  its  hungry  lips  sought  eagerly  for  their  natural 
food.  The  touch  of  them  sent  a  delicious  thrill  through  Louie ; 
she  turned  her  head  round  and  kissed  the  tiny,  helpless  cheek 
with  a  curious  violence  ;  then,  tired  of  Mrs.  Bury,  and  anxious  to 
get  back  to  her  plans,  she  almost  threw  the  child  to  her. 

'  There — take  it !    I'll  soon  get  it  again  when  I  want  to.' 

And  she  was  as  good  as  her  word.  The  period  of  convales- 
cence was  to  poor  Mrs.  Mason — a  sickly,  plaintive  creature  at  the 
best  of  times — one  long  struggle  and  misery.  Louie  represented 
to  her  a  sort  of  bird  of  prey,  who  was  for  ever  descending  on  her 
child  and  carrying  it  off  to  unknown  lairs.  For  neither  mother 
nor  nurse  had  Louie  the  smallest  consideration  ;  she  despised  and 
tyrannised  over  them  both.  But  her  hungry  fondness  for  the 
baby  grew  with  gratification,  and  there  was  no  mastering  her  in 
the  matter.  Warm  weather  came,  and  when  she  reached  home 
after  her  work,  she  managed  by  one  ruse  or  another  to  get  hold 
of  the  child,  and  on  one  occasion  she  disappeared  with  it  into  the 
street  for  hours.  David  was  amazed  by  the  whim,  but  neither  he 
nor  anyone  else  could  control  it.  At  last,  Mrs.  Mason  was  more 
or  less  hysterical  all  day  long,  and  hardly  sane  when  Louie  was 
within  reach.  As  for  the  husband,  who  managed  to  be  more  at 
home  during  the  days  of  his  wife's  weakness  than  he  had  yet 
been  since  David's  tenancy  began,  he  complained  to  David  and 
spoke  his  mind  to  Louie  once  or  twice,  and  then,  suddenly,  he 
ceased  to  pay  any  attention  to  his  wife's  wails.  With  preter- 
natural quickness  the  wife  guessed  the  reason.  A  fresh  terror 
seized  her — terror  of  the  girl's  hateful  beauty.  She  dragged  her- 
self from  her  bed,  found  a  room,  while  Louie  was  at  her  work, 
and  carried  off  baby  and  husband,  leaving  no  address.  Luckily 
for  her,  the  impression  of  Louie's  black  eyes  proved  to  have  been 
a  passing  intoxication,  and  the  poor  mother  breathed  and  lived 
again. 

Meanwhile  Louie's  excitement  and  restlessness  over  the  Paris 
plan  made  her  more  than  usually  trying  to  Dora.  During  this 
fortnight  she  could  never  be  counted  on  for  work,  not  even  when 
it  was  a  question  of  finishing  an  important  commission.  She  was 
too  full  of  her  various  preparations.  Barbier  offered  her,  for 
instance,  a  daily  French  lesson.  She  grasped  in  an  instant  the 
facilities  which  even  the  merest  smattering  of  French  would  give 
her  in  Paris ;  every  night  she  sat  up  over  her  phrase  book,  and 
every  afternoon  she  cut  her  work  short  to  go  to  Barbier.  Her 
whole  life  seemed  to  be  one  flame  of  passionate  expectation, 
though  what  exactly  she  expected  it  would  have  been  hard  to 
say. 

Poor  Dora  !  She  had  suffered  many  things  in  much  patience 
all  these  weeks.  Louie's  clear,  hard  mind,  her  sensuous  tempera- 
ment, her  apparent  lack  of  all  maidenly  reserve,  all  girlish 
softness,  made  her  incomprehensible  to  one  for  whom  life  was  an 
iridescent  web  of  ideal  aims  and  obligations.  The  child  of  grace 
was  dragged  out  of  her  own  austere  or  delicate  thoughts,  and 


254  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOZ  n 

made  to  touch,  taste,  and  handle  what  the  '  world,'  as  the  Chris- 
tian understands  it,  might  be  like.  Like  every  other  daughter  of 
the  people,  Dora  was  familiar  enough  with  sin  and  weakness — 
Daddy  alone  had  made  her  amply  acquainted  with  both  at  one 
portion  or  another  of  his  career.  But  just  this  particular  temper 
of  Louie's,  with  its  apparent  lack  both  of  passion  and  of  moral 
sense,  was  totally  new  to  her,  and  produced  at  times  a  stifling 
impression  upon  her,  without  her  being  able  to  explain  to  herself 
with  any  clearness  what  was  the  matter. 

Yet,  in  truth,  it  often  seemed  as  if  the  lawless  creature  had 
been  in  some  sort  touched  by  Dora,  as  if  daily  contact  with  a 
being  so  gentle  and  so  magnanimous  had  won  even  upon  her. 
That  confidence,  for  instance,  which  Louie  had  promised  John, 
at  Dora's  expense,  had  never  been  made.  When  it  came  to  the 
point,  some  touch  of  remorse,  of  shame,  had  sealed  the  girl's 
mocking  lips. 

One  little  fact  in  particular  had  amazed  Dora.  Louie  insisted, 
for  a  caprice,  on  going  with  her  one  night,  in  Easter  week,  to  St. 
Damian's,  and  thenceforward  went  often.  What  attracted  her, 
Dora  puzzled  herself  to  discover.  When,  however,  Louie  had 
been  a  diligent  spectator,  even  at  early  services,  for  some  weeks, 
Dora  timidly  urged  that  she  might  be  confirmed,  and  that  Father 
Kussell  would  take  her  into  his  class.  Louie  laughed  immoderately 
at  the  idea,  but  continued  to  go  to  St.  Damian's  all  the  same. 
Dora  could  not  bear  to  be  near  her  in  church,  but  however  far 
away  she  might  place  herself,  she  was  more  conscious  than  she 
liked  to  be  of  Louie's  conspicuous  figure  and  hat  thrown  out 
against  a  particular  pillar  which  the  girl  affected.  The  sharp 
uplifted  profile  with  its  disdainful  expression  drew  her  eyes 
against  their  will.  She  was  also  constantly  aware  of  the  impres- 
sion Louie  made  upon  the  crowd,  of  the  way  in  which  she  was 
stared  at  and  remarked  upon.  Whenever  she  passed  in  or  out  of 
the  church,  people  turned,  and  the  girl,  expecting  it,  and  totally 
unabashed,  flashed  her  proud  look  from  side  to  side. 

But  once  in  her  place,  she  was  not  inattentive.  The  dark 
chancel  with  its  flowers  and  incense,  the  rich  dresses  and  slow 
movements  of  the  priests,  the  excitement  of  the  processional 
hymns — these  things  caught  her  and  held  her.  Her  look  was 
fixed  and  eager  all  the  time.  As  to  the  clergy,  Dora  spoke  to 
Father's  Russell's  sister,  and  some  efforts  were  made  to  get  hold 
of  the  new-comer.  But  none  of  them  were  at  all  successful.  The 
girl  slipped  through  everybody's  hands.  Only  in  the  case  of  one 
of  the  curates,  a  man  with  a  powerful,  ugly  head,  and  a  penetrat- 
ing personality,  did  she  show  any  wavering.  Dora  fancied  that 
she  put  herself  once  or  twice  in  his  way,  that  something  about 
him  attracted  her,  and  that  he  might  have  influenced  her.  But 
as  soon  as  the  Paris  project  rose  on  the  horizon,  Louie  thought  of 
nothing  else.  Father  Impey  and  St.  Damian's,  like  everything 
else,  were  forgotten.  She  never  went  near  the  church  from  the 
evening  David  told  her  his  news  to  the  day  they  left  Manchester. 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  255 

David  ran  in  to  say  good-bye  to  Daddy  and  Dora  on  the  night 
before  they  were  to  start.  Since  the  Paris  journey  had  been  in 
the  air,  Daddy's  friendliness  for  the  young  fellow  had  revived. 
He  was  not,  after  all,  content  to  sit  at  home  upon  his  six  hundred 
pounds  'like  a  hatching  hen,'  and  so  far  Daddy,  whose  interest 
in  him  had  been  for  the  time  largely  dashed  by  his  sudden  acces- 
sion to  fortune,  was  appeased. 

When  David  appeared  Lomax  was  standing  on  the  rug,  with  a 
book  under  his  arm. 

'  Well,  good-bye  to  you,  young  man,  good-bye  to  you.  And 
here's  a  book  to  take  with  you  that  you  may  read  in  the  train.  It 
will  stir  you  up  a  bit,  give  you  an  idea  or  two.  Don't  you  come 
back  too  soon.' 

'  Father,'  remonstrated  Dora,  who  was  standing  by,  '  who's  to 
look  after  his  business  ? ' 

'  Be  quiet,  Dora  !  That  book  '11  show  him  what  can  be  made 
even  of  a  beastly  bookseller. ' 

David  took  it  from  him,  looked  at  the  title,  and  laughed.  He 
knew  it  well.  It  was  the  'Life  and  Errors  of  John  Dunton, 
Citizen  of  London,'  the  eccentric  record  of  a  seventeenth-century 
dealer  in  books,  who,  like  Daddy,  had  been  a  character  and  a 
vagrant. 

'  Och  !  Don't  I  know  it  by  heart  ? '  said  Daddy,  with  enthu- 
siasm. '  Many  a  time  it's  sent  me  off  tramping,  when  my  poor 
Isabella  thought  she'd  got  me  tied  safe  by  the  heels  in  the  chimney 
corner.  "  Though  love  is  strong  as  death,  and  every  good  man 
loves  his  wife  as  himself,  yet — mtmy's  the  score  of  times  I've  said 
it  off  pat  to  Isabella — yet  I  cannot  think  of  being  confined  in  a 
narrower  study  than  the  whole  world. "  There's  a  man  for  you  ! 
He  gets  rid  of  one  wife  and  saddles  himself  with  another — sorrow 
a  bit  will  he  stop  at  home  for  either  of  them  !  ' '  Finding  I  am  for 
travelling,  Valeria,  to  show  the  height  of  her  love,  is  as  willing  I 
should  see  Europe  as  Eliza  was  I  should  see  America."  Och  ! 
give  me  the  book,  you  divil,'  cried  Daddy,  growing  more  and 
more  Hibernian  as  his  passion  rose,  'and,  bedad,  but  I'll  drive  it 
into  you.' 

And,  reaching  over,  Daddy  seized  it,  and  turned  over  the 
pages  with  a  trembling  hand.  Dora  flushed,  and  the  tears  rose 
into  her  eyes.  She  realised  perfectly  that  this  performance  was 
levelled  at  her  at  least  as  much  as  at  David.  Daddy's  mad 
irritability  had  grown  of  late  with  every  week. 

'  Listen  to  this,  Davy ! '  cried  Daddy,  putting  up  his  hand  for 
silence.  '  "  When  I  have  crossed  the  Hellespont,  where  poor 
Leander  was  drowned,  Greece,  China,  and  the  Holy  Land  are  the 
other  three  countries  I'm  bound  to.  And  perhaps  when  my  hand 
is  in — "  ' 

'  My  hand  is  in  ! '  repeated  Daddy,  in  an  ecstasy.  '  What  a 
jewel  of  a  man  ! ' 

'  I  may  step  thence  to  the  Indies,  for  I  am  a  true  lover  of 
travels,  and,  when  I  am  once  mounted,  care  not  whether  I  meet 


256  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BOOK  11 

the  sun  at  his  rising  or  going  down,  provided  only  I  may  but 
ramble  .  .  .  He  is  truly  a  scholar  who  is  versed  in  the  volume 
of  the  Universe,  who  doth  not  so  much  read  of  Nature  as  study 
Nature  herself.' 

'  Well  said — well  said  indeed  ! '  cried  Daddy,  flinging  the  book 
down  with  a  wild  gesture  which  startled  them  both.  '  Was  that 
the  man,  Adrian  Lomax,  to  spend  the  only  hours  of  the  only  life 
he  was  ever  likely  to  see — his  first  thought  in  the  morning,  and 
his  last  thought  at  night — in  tickling  the  stomachs  of  Manchester 
clerks  ? ' 

His  peaked  chin  and  straggling  locks  fell  forward  on  his 
breast.  He  stared  sombrely  at  the  young  people  before  him,  in 
an  attitude  which,  as  usual,  was  the  attitude  of  an  actor. 

David's  natural  instinct  was  to  jeer.  But  a  glance  at  Dora 
perplexed  him.  There  was  some  tragedy  he  did  not  understand 
under  this  poor  comedy. 

'Don't  speak  back,'  said  Dora,  hurriedly,  under  her  breath, 
as  she  passed  him  to  get  her  frame.  '  It  only  makes  him  worse.' 

After  a  few  minutes'  broken  chat,  which  Daddy's  mood  made 
it  difficult  to  keep  up,  David  took  his  departure.  Dora  followed 
him  downstairs. 

'  You're  going  to  be  away  a  fortnight,'  she  said,  timidly. 

As  she  spoke,  she  moved  her  head  backwards  and  forwards 
against  the  wall,  as  though  it  ached,  and  she  could  not  find  a 
restful  spot. 

'  Oh,  we  shall  be  back  by  then,  never  fear  ! '  said  David, 
cheerfully.  He  was  growing  more  and  more  sorry  for  her. 

'I  should  like  to  see  foreign  parts,'  she  said  wistfully.  'Is 
there  a  beautiful  church,  a  cathedral,  in  Paris  ?  Oh,  there  are  a 
great  many  in  France,  I  know  !  I've  heard  the  people  at  St. 
Damian's  speak  of  them.  I  would  like  to  see  the  services.  But 
they  can't  be  nicer  than  ours.' 

David  smiled. 

'  I'm  afraid  I  can't  tell  you  much  about  them,  Miss  Dora  ; 
they  aren't  in  my  line.  Good-bye,  and  keep  your  heart  up.' 

He  was  going,  but  he  turned  back  to  say  quickly — 

'  Why  don't  you  let  him  go  off  for  a  bit  of  a  tramp  ?  It  might 
quiet  him.' 

'  I  would  ;  I  would,'  she  said  eagerly  ;  '  but  I  don't  know  what 
would  come  of  it.  We're  dreadfully  behindhand  this  month,  and 
if  he  were  to  go  away,  people  would  be  down  on  us  ;  they'd  think 
he  wanted  to  get  out  of  paying. ' 

He  stayed  talking  a  bit,  trying  to  advise  her,  and,  in  the  first 
place,  trying  to  find  out  how  wrong  things  were.  But  she  had 
not  yet  come  to  the  point  of  disclosing  her  father's  secrets.  She 
parried  his  questions,  showing  him  all  the  while,  by  look  and 
voice,  that  she  was  grateful  to  him  for  asking — for  caring. 

He  went  at  last,  and  she  locked  the  door  behind  him.  But 
when  that  was  done,  she  stood  still  in  the  dark,  wringing  her 
hands  in  a  silent  passion  of  longing — longing  to  be  with  him,  out- 


CHAP,  x  YOUTH  257 

side,  in  the  night,  to  hear  his  voice,  to  see  his  handsome  looks 
again.  Oh  !  the  fortnight  would  be  long.  So  long  as  he  was 
there,  within  a  stone's  throw,  though  he  did  not  love  her,  and 
she  was  sad  and  anxious,  yet  Manchester  held  her  treasure,  and 
Manchester  streets  had  glamour,  had  charm. 

He  walked  to  Piccadilly,  and  took  a  'bus  to  Mortimer  Street. 
He  must  say  good-bye  also  to  Mr.  Ancrum,  who  had  been  low  and 
ill  of  late. 

'  So  you  are  off,  David  ? '  said  Ancrum,  rousing  himself  from 
what  seemed  a  melancholy  brooding  over  books  that  he  was  in 
truth  not  reading.  As  David  shook  hands  with  him,  the  small 
fusty  room,  the  pale  face  and  crippled  form  awoke  in  the  lad  a 
sense  of  indescribable  dreariness.  In  a  flash  of  recoil  and  desire 
his  thought  sprang  to  the  journey  of  the  next  day — to  the  May 
seas — the  foreign  land. 

'  Well,  good  luck  to  you  ! '  said  the  minister,  altering  his 
position  so  as  to  look  at  his  visitor  full,  and  doing  it  with  a  slow- 
ness which  showed  that  all  movement  was  an  effort.  '  Look  after 
your  sister,  Davy. ' 

David  had  sat  down  at  Ancrum's  invitation.  He  said  nothing 
in  answer  to  this  last  remark,  and  Ancrum  could  not  decipher 
him  in  the  darkness  visible  of  the  ill-trimmed  lamp. 

'  She's  been  on  your  mind,  Davy,  hasn't  she  ? '  he  said,  gently, 
laying  his  blanched  hand  on  the  young  man's  knee. 

'  Well,  perhaps  she  has,'  David  admitted,  with  an  odd  note  in 
his  voice.  '  She's  not  an  easy  one  to  manage.' 

'  No.  But  you've  got  to  manage  her,  Davy.  There's  only  you 
and  she  together.  It's  your  task.  It's  set  you.  And  you're 
young,  indeed,  and  raw,  to  have  that  beautiful  self-willed  creature 
on  your  hands.' 

'  Beautiful  ?  Do  you  think  she's  that  ? '  David  tried  to  laugh  it  off. 

The  minister  nodded. 

'  You'll  find  it  out  in  Paris  even  more  than  you  have  here. 
Paris  is  a  bad  place,  they  say.  So's  London,  for  the  matter  of 
that.  Davy,  before  you  go,  I've  got  one  thing  to  say  to  you.' 

'  Say  away,  sir.' 

'  You  know  a  great  deal,  Davy.  My  wits  are  nothing  to 
yours.  You'll  shoot  ahead  of  all  your  old  friends,  my  boy,  some 
day.  But  there's  one  thing  you  know  nothing  about — absolutely 
nothing — and  you  prate  as  if  you  did.  Perhaps  you  must  turn 
Christian  before  you  do.  I  don't  know.  At  least,  so  long  as 
you're  not  a  Christian  you  won't  know  what  we  mean  by  it — 
what  the  Bible  means  by  it.  It's  one  little  word,  Davy — sin.'' 

The  minister  spoke  with  a  deep  intensity,  as  though  his  whole 
being  were  breathed  into  what  he  said.  David  sat  silent  and 
embarrassed,  opposition  rising  in  him  to  what  he  thought 
ministerial  assumption. 

'  Well,  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,'  he  said,  after  a  pause. 
'  One  needn't  be  very  old  to  find  out  that  a  good  many  people  and 


358  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE  BK.  n,  CH.  x 

things  in  the  world  are  pretty  bad.  Only  we  Secularists  explain 
it  differently  from  you.  We  put  a  good  deal  of  it  down  to  educa- 
tion, or  health,  or  heredity.' 

'  Oh,  I  know — I  know  ! '  said  the  minister  hastily,  as  though 
shrinking  from  the  conversation  he  had  himself  evoked.  '  I'm 
not  fit  to  talk  about  it,  Davy.  I'm  ill,  I  think  !  But  there  were 
those  two  things  I  wanted  to  say  to  you — your  sister — and — ' 

His  voice  dropped.  He  shaded  his  eyes  and  looked  away  from 
David  into  the  smouldering  coals. 

'  No — no,'  he  resumed  almost  in  a  whisper  ;  '  it's  the  will — it's 
the  will.  It's  not  anything  he  says,  and  Christ — Christ 's  the 
only  help.' 

Again  there  was  a  silence.  David  studied  his  old  teacher 
attentively,  as  far  as  the  half-light  availed  him.  The  young  man 
was  simply  angry  with  a  religion  which  could  torment  a  soul  and 
body  like  this.  Ancrum  had  been  '  down  '  in  this  way  for  a  long 
time  now.  Was  another  of  his  black  fits  approaching  ?  If  so, 
religion  was  largely  responsible  for  them  ! 

When  at  last  David  sighted  his  own  door,  he  perceived  a  figure 
lounging  on  the  steps. 

'  I  say,'  he  said  to  himself  with  a  groan,  '  it  s  John  ! ' 

'  What  on  earth  do  you  want,  John,  at  this  time  of  night  ? '  he 
demanded.  But  he  knew  perfectly. 

'  Look  here  ! '  said  the  other  thickly,  '  it's  all  straight.  You're 
coming  back  in  a  fortnight,  and  you'll  bring  her  back  too  ! ' 

David  laughed  impatiently. 

'Do  you  think  I  shall  lose  her  in  Paris  or  drop  her  in  the 
Channel  ? ' 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  Dalby,  with  a  curiously  heavy  and  indis- 
tinct utterance.  '  She's  very  bad  to  me.  She  won't  ever  marry 
me  ;  I  know  that.  But  when  I  think  I  might  never  see  her  again 
I'm  fit  to  go  and  hang  myself.' 

David  began  to  kick  the  pebbles  in  the  road. 

'  You  know  what  I  think  about  it  all,'  he  said  at  last,  gloomily. 
'  I've  told  you  before  now.  She  couldn't  care  for  you  if  she  tried. 
It  isn't  a  ha'p'orth  of  good.  I  don't  believe  she'll  ever  care  for 
anybody.  Anyway,  she'll  many  nobody  who  can't  give  her 
money  and  fine  clothes.  There  !  You  may  put  that  in  your  pipe 
and  smoke  it,  for  it's  as  true  as  you  stand  there.' 

John  turned  round  restlessly,  laid  his  hands  against  the  wall, 
and  his  head  upon  them. 

'Well,  it  don't  matter,'  he  said  slowly,  after  a  pause.  'I'll 
be  here  early.  Good  night ! ' 

David  stood  and  looked  after  him  in  mingled  disgust  and  pity. 

'  I  must  pack  him  off,'  he  said,  '  I  must.' 

Then  he  threw  back  his  young  shoulders  and  drew  in  the  warm 
spring  air  with  a  long  breath.  Away  with  care  and  trouble  ! 
Things  would  come  right — must  come  right.  This  weather  was 
summer,  and  in  forty-eight  hours  they  would  be  in  Paris  ! 


BOOK   III 
STORM  AND   STRESS 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  brother  and  sister  left  Manchester  about  midday,  and  spent 
the  night  in  London  at  a  little  City  hotel  much  frequented  by 
Nonconformist  ministers,  which  Ancrum  had  recommended. 

Then  next  day  !  How  little  those  to  whom  all  the  widest 
opportunities  of  life  come  for  the  asking,  can  imagine  such  a  zest, 
such  a  freshness  of  pleasure  !  David  had  hesitated  long  before 
the  expense  of  the  day  service  vid  Calais  ;  they  could  have  gone 
by  night  third  class  for  half  the  money  ;  or  they  could  have 
taken  returns  by  one  of  the  cheaper  and  longer  routes.  But  the 
eagerness  to  make  the  most  of  every  hour  of  time  and  daylight 
prevailed  ;  they  were  to  go  by  Calais  and  come  back  by  Dieppe, 
seeing  thereby  as  much  as  possible  on  the  two  journeys  in  addi- 
tion to  the  fortnight  in  Paris.  The  mere  novelty  of  going  any- 
thing but  third  class  was  full  of  savour ;  Louie's  self-conscious 
dignity  as  she  settled  herself  into  her  corner  on  leaving  Charing 
Cross  caught  David's  eye  ;  he  saw  himself  reflected  and  laughed. 

It  was  a  glorious  day,  the  firstling  of  the  summer.  In  the 
blue  overhead  the  great  clouds  rose  intensely  thunderously 
white,  and  journeyed  seaward  under  a  light  westerly  wind.  The 
railway  banks,  the  copses  were  all  primroses ;  every  patch  of 
water  had  in  it  the  white  and  azure  of  the  sky  ;  the  lambs  were 
lying  in  the  still  scanty  shadow  of  the  elms  ;  every  garden  showed 
its  tulips  and  wallflowers,  and  the  air,  the  sunlight,  the  vividness 
of  each  hue  and  line  bore  with  them  an  intoxicating  joy,  especi- 
ally for  eyes  still  adjusted  to  the  tones  and  lights  of  Manchester 
in  winter. 

The  breeze  carried  them  merrily  over  a  dancing  sea.  And 
once  on  the  French  side  they  spent  their  first  hour  in  crossing 
from  one  side  of  their  carriage  to  the  other,  pointing  and  calling 
incessantly.  For  the  first  time  since  certain  rare  moments  in 
their  childhood  they  were  happy  together  and  at  one.  Mother 
Earth  unrolled  for  them  a  corner  of  her  magic  show,  and  they 
took  it  like  children  at  the  play,  now  shouting,  now  spell-bound. 

David  had  George  Sand's  '  Mauprat '  on  his  knee,  but  he  read 
nothing  the  whole  day.  Never  had  he  used  his  eyes  so  intently, 
so  passionately.  Nothing  escaped  them,  neither  the  detail  of 
that  strange  and  beautiful  fen  from  which  Amiens  rises — a  coun- 
try of  peat  and  peat-cutters  where  the  green  plain  is  diapered 
with  innumerable  tiny  lakes  edged  with  black  heaps  of  turf  and 
daintily  set  with  scattered  trees — nor  the  delicate  charm  of  the 
forest  lands  about  Chantilly.  So  much  thinner  and  gracefuller 


262  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

these  woods  were  than  English  woods  !  French  art  and  skill  were 
here  already  in  the  wild  country.  Each  tree  stood  out  as  though 
it  had  been  personally  thought  for  ;  every  plantation  was  in  regu- 
lar lines  ;  each  woody  walk  drove  straight  from  point  to  point, 
following  out  a  plan  orderly  and  intricate  as  a  spider's  web. 

By  this  time  Louie's  fervour  of  curiosity  and  attention  had 
very  much  abated  ;  she  grew  tired  and  cross,  and  presently  fell 
asleep.  But,  with  every  mile  less  between  them  and  Paris, 
David's  pulse  beat  faster,  and  his  mind  became  more  absorbed 
in  the  flying  scene.  He  hung  beside  the  window,  thrilling  with 
enchantment  and  delight,  drinking  in  the  soft  air,  the  beauty  of 
the  evening  clouds,  the  wonderful  greens  and  silvers  and  fiery 
browns  of  the  poplars.  His  mind  was  full  of  images — the  deep 
lily-sprinkled  lake  wherein  Stenio,  Lelia's  poet  lover,  plunged  and 
died  ;  the  grandiose  landscape  of  Victor  Hugo  ;  Rene  sitting  on 
the  cliff-side,  and  looking  farewell  to  the  white  home  of  his  child- 
hood ; — of  lines  from  '  Childe  Harold  '  and  from  Shelley.  His 
mind  was  in  a  ferment  of  youth  and  poetry,  and  the  France  he 
saw  was  not  the  workaday  France  of  peasant  and  high  road  and 
factory,  but  the  creation  of  poetic  intelligence,  of  ignorance  and 
fancy. 

Paris  came  in  a  flash.  He  had  realised  to  the  full  the  squalid 
and  ever-widening  zone  of  London,  had  frittered  away  his  ex- 
pectations almost,  in  the  passing  it ;  but  here  the  great  city  had 
hardly  announced  itself  before  they  were  in  the  inidst  of  it,  shot 
out  into  the  noise,  and  glare,  and  crowd  of  the  Nord  station. 

They  had  no  luggage  to  wait  for,  and  David,  trembling  with 
excitement  so  that  he  could  hardly  give  the  necessary  orders, 
shouldered  the  bags,  got  a  cab  and  gave  the  address.  Outside  it 
was  still  twilight,  but  the  lamps  were  lit  and  the  Boulevard  into 
which  they  presently  turned  seemed  to  brother  and  sister  a  blaze 
of  light.  The  young  green  of  the  trees  glittered  under  the  gas 
like  the  trees  of  a  pantomime  ;  the  kiosks  threw  their  lights  out 
upon  the  moving  crowd  ;  shops  and  cafes  were  all  shining  and 
alive  ;  and  on  either  hand  rose  the  long  line  of  stately  houses, 
unbroken  by  any  London  or  Manchester  squalors  and  inequalities, 
towering  as  it  seemed  into  the  skies,  and  making  for  the  great 
spectacle  of  life  beneath  them  a  setting  more  gay,  splendid,  and 
complete  than  any  Englishman  in  his  own  borders  can  ever  see. 

Louie  had  turned  white  with  pleasure  and  excitement.  All 
her  dreams  of  gaiety  and  magnificence,  of  which  the  elements  had 
been  gathered  from  the  illustrated  papers  and  the  Manchester 
theatres,  were  more  than  realised  by  these  Paris  gas-lights,  these 
vast  houses,  these  laughing  and  strolling  crowds. 

'  Look  at  those  people  having  their  coffee  out  of  doors,'  she 
cried  to  David,  '  and  that  white  and  gold  place  behind.  Good- 
ness 1  what  they  must  spend  in  gas  !  And  just  look  at  those  two 
girls — look,  quick — there,  with  the  'young  man  in  the  black 
moustache — they  are  loud,  but  aren't  their  dresses  just  sweet  ? ' 

She  craned  her  neck  out  of  window,  exclaiming — now  at  this, 


CHAP,  i  STORM  AND   STRESS  263 

now  at  that — till  suddenly  they  passed  out  of  the  Boulevard  into 
the  comparative  darkness  of  side  ways.  Here  the  height  of  the 
houses  produced  a  somewhat  different  impression  ;  Louie  looked 
out  none  the  less  keenly,  but  her  chatter  ceased. 

At  last  the  cab  drew  up  with  a  clatter  at  the  side  of  a  par- 
ticularly dark  and  narrow  street,  ascending  somewhat  sharply 
to  the  north-west  from  the  point  where  they  stopped. 

'Now  for  the  concierge^  said  David,  looking  round  him, 
after  he  had  paid  the  man. 

And  conning  Barbier's  directions  in  his  mind,  he  turned  into 
the  gateway,  and  made  boldly  for  a  curtained  door  behind  which 
shone  a  light. 

The  woman,  who  came  out  in  answer  to  his  knock,  looked 
him  all  over  from  head  to  foot,  while  he  explained  himself  in  his 
best  French. 

'  Tiens,'1  she  said,  indifferently,  to  a  man  behind  her,  'it's 
the  people  for  No.  26 — des  Anglais — M.  Paul  te  Va  dit.  Hand 
me  the  key.' 

The  bonhomme  addressed — a  little,  stooping,  wizened  creature, 
with  china-blue  eyes,  showing  widely  in  his  withered  face  under 
the  light  of  the  paraffin-lamp  his  wife  was  holding — reached  a 
key  from  a  board  on  the  wall  and  gave  it  to  her. 

The  woman  again  surveyed  them  both,  the  young  man  and 
the  girl,  and  seemed  to  debate  with  herself  whether  she  should 
take  the  trouble  to  be  civil.  Finally  she  said  in  an  ungracious 
voice — 

'  It's  the  fourth  floor  to  the  right.  I  must  take  you  up,  I 
suppose.' 

David  thanked  her,  and  she  preceded  them  with  the  light 
through  a  door  opposite  and  up  some  stone  stairs. 

"When  they  had  mounted  two  flights,  she  turned  abruptly  on 
the  landing — 

'  You  take  the  appartement  from  M.  Dubois  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  said  David,  enchanted  to  rind  that,  thanks  to  old 
Barbier's  constant  lessons,  he  could  both  understand  and  reply 
with  tolerable  ease  ;  '  for  a  fortnight.' 

'  Take  care ;  the  landlord  will  be  descending  on  you  ;  M. 
Dubois  never  pays  ;  he  may  be  turned  out  any  day,  and  his 
things  sold.  Where  is  Mademoiselle  going  to  sleep  ? ' 

'  But  in  M.  Dubois'  apptartement,'  said  David,  hoping  this 
time,  in  his  dismay,  that  he  did  not  understand  ;  '  he  promised 
to  arrange  everything.' 

'  He  has  arranged  nothing.  Do  you  wish  that  I  should 
provide  some  things  ?  You  can  hire  some  furniture  from  me. 
And  do  you  want  service  ? ' 

The  woman  had  a  grasping  eye.  David's  frugal  instincts 
took  alarm. 

'  Merci,  Madame  !  My  sister  and  I  do  not  require  much.  We 
shall  wait  upon  ourselves.  If  Madame  will  tell  us  the  name  of 
some  restaurant  near — ' 


264  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  ill 

Instead,  Madame  made  an  angry  sound  and  thrust  the  key 
abruptly  into  Louie's  hand,  David  being  laden  with  the  bags. 

'There  are  two  more  flights,'  she  said  roughly  ;  'then  turn 
to  the  left,  and  go  up  the  staircase  straight  in  front  of  you — first 
door  to  the  right.  You've  got  eyes  ;  you'll  find  the  way.' 

'  Mais,  Madame — '  cried  David,  bewildered  by  these  direc- 
tions, and  trying  to  detain  her. 

But  she  was  already  half-way  down  the  flight  below  them, 
throwing  back  remarks  which,  to  judge  from  their  tone,  were 
not  complimentary. 

There  was  no  help  for  it.  Louie  was  dropping  with  fatigue, 
and  beginning  to  be  much  out  of  temper.  David  with  difficulty 
assumed  a  hopeful  air,  and  up  they  went  again.  Leading  off  the 
next  landing  but  one  they  found  a  narrow  passage,  and  at  the 
end  of  it  a  ladder-like  staircase.  At  the  top  of  this  they  came 
upon  a  corridor  at  right  angles,  in  which  the  first  door  bore  the 
welcome  figures  '  26.' 

'  All  right,'  said  David  ;  '  here  we  are.  New  we'll  just  go  in, 
and  look  about  us.  Then  if  you'll  sit  and  rest  a  bit,  I'll  run 
down  and  see  where  we  can  get  something  to  eat.' 

'  Be  quick,  then — do,'  said  Louie.     '  I'm  just  fit  to  drop.' 

With  a  beating  heart  he  put  the  key  into  the  lock  of  the  door. 
It  fitted,  but  he  could  not  turn  it.  Both  he  and  Louie  tried  in 
vain. 

'  What  a  nuisance  ! '  said  he  at  last.  '  I  must  go  and  fetch 
up  that  woman  again.  You  sit  down  and  wait.' 

As  he  spoke  there  was  a  sound  below  of  quick  steps,  and  of  a 
voice,  a  woman's  voice,  humming  a  song. 

'  Some  one  coming,'  he  said  to  Louie  ;  '  perhaps  they  under- 
stand the  lock.' 

They  ran  down  to  the  landing  below  to  reconnoitre.  There 
was,  of  course,  gas  on  the  staircase,  and  as  they  hung  over  the 
iron  railing  they  saw  mounting  towards  them  a  young  girl.  She 
wore  a  light  fawn-coloured  dress  and  a  hat  covered  with  Parma 
violets.  Hearing  voices  above  her,  she  threw  her  head  back, 
and  stopped  a  moment.  Louie's  eye  was  caught  by  her  hand 
and  its  tiny  wrist  as  it  lay  on  the  balustrade,  and  by  the  coils 
and  twists  of  her  fair  hair.  David  saw  no  details,  only  what 
seemed  to  him  a  miracle  of  grace  and  colour,  born  in  an  instant, 
out  of  the  dark — or  out  of  his  own  excited  fancy  ? 

She  came  slowly  up  the  steps,  looking  at  them,  at  the  tall 
dark  youth  and  the  girl  beside  him.  Then  on  the  top  step  she 
paused,  instead  of  going  past  them.  David  took  off  his  hat,  but 
all  the  practical  questions  he  had  meant  to  ask  deserted  him. 
His  French  seemed  to  have  flown. 

'You  are  strangers,  aren't  you?'  she  said,  in  a  clear,  high, 
somewhat  imperious  voice.  '  What  number  do  you  want  ?' 

Her  expression  had  a  certain  hautenr,  as  of  one  defending 
her  native  ground  against  intruders.  Under  the  stimulus  of  it 
David  found  his  tongue. 


CHAP.  I  STORM   AND   STRESS  265 

'We  have  taken  M.  Paul  Dubois'  rooms,'  he  said.  '  We  have 
found  his  door,  but  the  key  the  concierge  gave  us  does  not  fit  it.' 

She  laughed,  a  free,  frank  laugh,  which  had  a  certain  wild 
note  in  it. 

'  These  doors  have  to  be  coaxed,'  she,  said  ;  '  they  don't  like 
foreigners.  Give  it  me.  This  is  my  way,  too.' 

Stepping  past  them,  she  preceded  them  up  the  narrow  stairs, 
and  was  just  about  to  try  the  key  in  the  lock,  when  a  sudden 
recollection  seemed  to  flash  upon  her. 

'  I  know  ! '  she  said,  turning  upon  them.  '  Tenez — queje  suis 
bete  !  You  are  Dubois'  English  friends.  He  told  me  something, 
and  I  had  forgotten  all  about  it.  You  are  going  to  take  his 
rooms  ? ' 

'  For  a  week  or  two,'  said  David,  irritated  a  little  by  the 
laughing  malice,  the  sarcastic  wonder  of  her  eyes,  '  while  he  is 
doing  some  work  in  Brussels.  It  seemed  a  convenient  arrange- 
ment, but  if  we  are  not  comfortable  we  shall  go  elsewhere.  If 
you  can  open  the  door  for  us  we  shall  be  greatly  obliged  to  you, 
Mademoiselle.  But  if  not  I  must  go  down  for  the  concierge.  We 
have  been  travelling  all  day,  and  my  sister  is  tired.' 

'  Where  did  you  learn  such  good  French  ? '  she  said  carelessly, 
at  the  same  time  leaning  her  weight  against  the  door,  and  ma- 
nipulating the  key  in  such  a  way  that  the  lock  turned,  and  the 
door  flew  open. 

Behind  it  appeared  a  large  dark  space.  The  light  from  the 
gas-jet  in  the  passage  struck  into  it,  but  beyond  a  chair  and  a  tall 
screen-like  object  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  it  seemed  to  David  to 
be  empty. 

'That's  his  atelier,  of  course,'  said  the  unknown  ;  '  and  mine 
is  next  to  it,  at  the  other  end.  I  suppose  he  has  a  cupboard  to 
sleep  in  somewhere.  Most  of  us  have.  But  I  don't  know  any- 
thing about  Dubois.  I  don't  like  him.  He  is  not  one  of  my 
friends.' 

She  spoke  in  a  dry,  masculine  voice,  which  contrasted  in  the 
sharpest  way  with  her  youth,  her  dress,  her  dainty  smallness. 
Then,  all  of  a  sudden,  as  her  eyes  travelled  over  the  English  pair 
standing  bewildered  on  the  threshold  of  Dubois'  most  uninviting 
apartment,  she  began  to  laugh  again.  Evidently  the  situation 
seemed  to  her  extremely  odd. 

'  Did  you  ask  the  people  downstairs  to  get  anything  ready  for 
you  ? '  she  inquired. 

'No,'  said  David,  hesitating;  'we  thought  we  could  manage 
for  ourselves.' 

'Well — perhaps — after  the  first,'  she  said,  still  laughing. 
'  But — I  may  as  well  warn  you — the  Merichat  will  be  very  uncivil 
to  you  if  you  don't  manage  to  pay  her  for  something.  Hadn't 
you  better  explore  ?  That  thing  in  the  middle  is  Dubois'  easel,  of 
course.' 

David  groped  his  way  in,  took  some  matches  from  his  pocket, 
found  a  gas-bracket  with  some  difficulty,  and  lit  up.  Then  he 


366  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

and  Louie  looked  round  them.  They  saw  a  gaunt  high  room,  lit 
on  one  side  by  a  huge  studio-window,  over  which  various  tattered 
blinds  were  drawn  ;  a  floor  of  bare  boards,  with  a  few  rags  of 
carpet  here  and  there  ;  in  the  middle,  a  table  covered  with 
painter's  apparatus  of  different  kinds  ;  palettes,  paints,  rags,  tin- 
pots,  and,  thrown  down  amongst  them,  some  stale  crusts  of 
bread;  a  large  easel,  with  a  number  of  old  and  dirty  canvases 
piled  upon  it ;  two  chairs,  one  of  them  without  the  usual  comple- 
ment of  legs  ;  a  few  etchings  and  oil-sketches  and  fragments  of 
coloured  stuffs  pinned  against  the  wall  in  wild  confusion  ;  and, 
spread  out  casually  behind  the  easel,  an  iron  folding-bedstead, 
without  either  mattress  or  bed-clothes.  In  the  middle  of  the 
floor  stood  a  smeared  kettle  on  a  spirit-stove,  and  a  few  odds  and 
ends  of  glass  and  china  were  on  the  mantelpiece,  together  with  a 
paraffin-lamp.  Every  article  in  the  room  was  thick  in  dust. 

When  she  had,  more  or  less,  ascertained  these  attractive 
details,  Louie  stood  still  in  the  middle  of  M.  Dubois1  apartment. 

4  What  did  he  tell  all  those  lies  for  ? '  she  said  to  David  fiercely. 
For  in  the  very  last  communication  received  from  him,  Dubois 
had  described  himself  as  having  made  all  necessary  preparations 
'  et pour  la  toilette  et pour  le  manger.'1  He  had  also  asked  for  the 
rent  in  advance,  which  David  with  some  demur  had  paid. 

'  Here's  something,'  cried  David  ;  and,  turning  a  handle  in 
the  wall,  he  pulled  a  flimsy  door  open  and  disclosed  what  seemed 
a  cupboard.  The  cupboard,  however,  contained  a  bed,  some 
bedding,  blankets,  and  washing  arrangements ;  and  David  joy- 
ously announced  his  discoveries.  Louie  took  no  notice  of  him. 
She  was  tired,  angry,  disgusted.  The  illusion  of  Paris  was,  for 
the  moment,  all  gone.  She  sat  herself  down  on  one  of  the  two 
chairs,  and,  taking  off  her  hat,  she  threw  it  from  her  on  to  the 
belittered  table  with  a  passionate  gesture. 

The  French  girl  had  so  far  stood  just  outside,  leaning  against 
the  doorway,  and  looking  on  with  unabashed  amusement  while 
they  made  their  inspection.  Now,  however,  as  Louie  uncovered, 
the  spectator  at  the  door  made  a  little,  quick  sound,  and  then  ran 
forward. 

'  Mais,  mon  Dieu  !  how  handsome  you  are  ! '  she  said  with  a 
whimsical  eagerness,  stopping  short  in  front  of  Louie,  and  driving 
her  little  hands  deep  into  the  pockets  of  her  jacket.  '  What  a 
head  ! — what  eyes  !  Why  didn't  I  see  before  ?  You  must  sit  to 
me — you  must !  You  will,  won't  you  ?  I  will  pay  you  anything 
you  like  !  You  sha'n't  be  dull — somebody  shall  come  and  amuse 
you.  Voyons — monsieur  I"1  she  called  imperiously. 

David  came  up.  She  stood  with  one  hand  on  the  table  lean- 
ing her  light  weight  backward,  looking  at  them  with  all  her  eyes 
— the  very  embodiment  of  masterful  caprice. 

'  Both  of  them  ! '  she  said  under  her  breath,  '  superbe  ! ' 
Monsieur,  look  here.  You  and  mademoiselle  are  tired,  There  is 
nothing  in  these  rooms.  Dubois  is  a  scamp  without  a  sou.  He 
does  no  work,  and  he  gambles  on  the  Bourse.  Everything  he 


CHAP,  ii  STORM   AND   STRESS  267 

had  he  has  sold  by  degrees.  If  he  has  gone  to  Brussels  now  to 
work  honestly,  it  is  for  the  first  time  in  his  life.  He  lives  on  the 
hope  of  getting  money  out  of  an  uncle  in  England — that  I  know, 
for  he  boasts  of  it  to  everybody.  It  is  just  like  him  to  play  a 
practical  joke  on  strangers.  No  doubt  you  have  paid  him 
already — n'est-ce  pas?  1  thought  as  much.  Well,  nevermind! 
My  rooms  are  next  door.  I  am  Elise  Delaunny.  I  work  in 
Taranne's  atelier.  I  am  an  artist,  pure  and  simple,  and  I  live  to 
please  myself  and  nobody  else.  But  I  have  a  chair  or  two,  and 
the  woman  downstairs  looks  after  me  because  I  make  it  worth  her 
while.  Come  with  me.  I  will  give  you  some  supper,  and  I  will 
lend  you  a  rug  and  a  pillow  for  that  bed.  Then  to-morrow  you 
can  decide  what  to  do.' 

David  protested,  stammering  and  smiling.  But  he  had 
flushed  a  rosy  red,  and  there  was  no  real  resistance  in  him. 
He  explained  the  invitation  to  Louie,  who  had  been  looking 
helplessly  from  one  to  the  other,  and  she  at  once  accepted  it. 
She  understood  perfectly  that  the  French  girl  admired  her  ;  her 
face  relaxed  its  frown  ;  she  nodded  to  the  stranger  with  a  sort 
of  proud  yielding,  and  then  let  herself  be  taken  by  the  arm  and 
led  once  more  along  the  corridor. 

Elise  Delaunay  unlocked  her  own  door. 

'  Bien ! '  she  said,  putting  her  head  in  first,  '  Merichat  has 
earned  her  money.  Now  go  in — go  in  ! — and  see  if  I  don't  give 
you  some  supper.' 


CHAPTER  II 

SHE  pushed  them  in,  and  shut  the  door  behind  them.  They 
looked  round  them  in  amazement.  Here  was  an  atelier  precisely 
corresponding  in  size  and  outlook  to  Dubois'.  But  to  their  tired 
eyes  the  change  was  one  from  squalor  to  fairyland.  The  room 
was  not  in  fact  luxurious  at  all.  But  there  was  a  Persian  rug 
or  two  on  the  polished  floor ;  there  was  a  wood  fire  burning  on 
the  hearth,  and  close  to  it  there  was  a  low  sofa  or  divan  covered 
with  pieces  of  old  stuffs,  and  flanked  by  a  table  whereon  stood  a 
little  meal,  a  roll,  some  cut  ham,  part  of  a  flat  fruit  tart  from 
the  pdtissier  next  door,  a  coffee  pot,  and  a  spirit  kettle  ready  for 
lighting.  There  were  two  easels  in  the  room  ;  one  was  laden 
with  sketches  and  photographs  ;  the  other  carried  a  half-finished 
picture  of  a  mosque  interior  in  Oran — a  rich  splash  of  colour, 
making  a  centre  for  all  the  rest.  Everywhere  indeed,  on  the 
walls,  on  the  floor,  or  standing  on  the  chairs,  were  studies  of 
Algeria,  done  with  an  ostentatiously  bold  and  rapid  hand.  On 
the  mantelpiece  was  a  small  reproduction  in  terra  cotta  of  one  of 
Dalou's  early  statues,  a  peasant  woman  in  a  long  cloak  straining 
her  homely  baby  to  her  breast — true  and  passionate.  Books  lay 
about,  and  in  a  corner  was  a  piano,  open,  with  a  confusion  of 
tattered  music  upon  it.  And  everywhere,  as  it  seemed  to  Louie, 


288  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

were  shoes  ! — the  daintiest  and  most  fantastic  shoes  imaginable — 
Turkish  shoes,  Pompadour  shoes,  old  shoes  and  new  shoes,  shoes 
with  heels  and  shoes  without,  shoes  lined  with  fur,  and  shoes 
blown  together,  as  one  might  think,  out  of  cardboard  and  rib- 
bons. The  English  girl's  eyes  fastened  upon  them  at  once. 

'Ah,  you  tink  my  shoes  pretty,'  said  the  hostess,  speaking  a 
few  words  of  English,  '•c'est  mon  dada,  voyez-vous — ma  collec- 
tion!— Tenez — I  cannot  say  dat  in  English,  Monsieur;  explain 
to  your  sister.  My  shoes  are  my  passion,  next  to  my  foot.  I 
am  not  pretty,  but  my  foot  is  ravishing.  Dalou  modelled  it  for 
his  Siren.  That  turned  my  head.  Sit  down,  Mademoiselle — we 
will  find  some  plates.' 

She  pushed  Louie  into  a  corner  of  the  divan,  and  then  she 
went  over  to  a  cupboard  standing  against  the  wall,  and  beckoned 
to  David. 

'  Take  the  plates — and  this  potted  meat.  Now  for  the  petit 
mn  my  doctor  cousin  brought  me  last  week  from  the  family 
estate.  I  have  stowed  it  away  somewhere.  Ah  !  here  it  is. 
We  are  from  the  Gironde — at  least  my  mother  was.  My  father 
was  nobody — bourgeois  from  tip  to  toe,  though  he  called  himself 
an  artist.  It  was  a  mesalliance  for  her  when  she  married  him. 
Oh,  he  led  her  a  life  ! — she  died  when  I  was  small,  and  last  year 
he  died,  eleven  months  ago.  I  did  my  best  to  cry.  Impossible  ! 
He  had  made  Maman  and  me  cry  too  much.  And  now  I  am 
perfectly  alone  in  the  world,  and  perfectly  well-behaved. 
Monsieur  Prudhomme  may  talk — I  snap  my  finger  at  him. 
You  will  have  your  ideas,  of  course.  No  matter !  If  you 
eat  my  salt,  you  will  hardly  be  able  to  speak  ill  of  me.' 

'Mademoiselle  ! '  cried  David,  inwardly  cursing  his  shyness — 
a  shyness  new  to  him — and  his  complete  apparent  lack  of  any- 
thing to  say,  or  the  means  of  saying  it. 

'  Oh,  don't  protest ! — after  that  journey  you  can't  afford  to 
waste  your  breath.  Move  a  little,  Monsieur — let  me  open  the 
other  door  of  the  cupboard — there  are  some  chocolates  worth 
eating  on  that  back  shelf.  Do  you  admire  my  armoire  ?  It  is 
old  Breton — it  belonged  to  my  grandmother,  who  was  from 
Morbihan.  She  brought  her  linen  in  it.  It  is  cherry  wood, 
you  see,  mounted  in  silver.  You  may  search  Paris  for  another 
like  it.  Look  at  that  flower  work  on  the  panels.  It  is  not 
banal  at  all — it  has  character — there  is  real  design  in  it.  Now 
take  the  chocolates,  and  these  sardines — put  them  down  over 
there.  As  for  me,  I  make  the  coffee.' 

She  ran  over  to  the  spirit  lamp,  and  set  it  going ;  she 
measured  out  the  coffee;  then  sitting  down  on  the  floor,  she 
took  the  bellows  and  blew  up  the  logs. 

'Tell  me  your  name,  Monsieur?'  she  said  suddenly,  looking 
round. 

David  gave  it  in  full,  his  own  name  and  Louie's.  Then  he 
walked  up  to  her,  making  an  effort  to  be  at  his  ease,  and  said 
something  about  their  French  descent.  His  mode  of  speaking 


CHAP,  ii  STORM  AND   STRESS  269 

was  slow  and  bookish — correct,  but  wanting  in  life.  After  this 
year's  devotion  to  French  books,  after  all  his  compositions  with 
Barbier,  he  had  supposed  himself  so  familiar  with  French ! 
"With  the  woman  from  the  loge,  indeed,  ho  could  have  talked  at 
large,  had  she  been  conversational  instead  of  rude.  But  here, 
with  this  little  glancing  creature,  he  felt  himself  plunged  in  a 
perfect  quagmire  of  ignorance  and  stupidity.  When  he  spoke  of 
being  half  French,  she  became  suddenly  grave,  and  studied  him 
with  an  intent  piercing  look.  'No,'  she  said  slowly,  'no,  at 
bottom  you  are  not  French  a  bit,  you  are  all  English,  I  feel  it. 
I  should  light  you — a  outrance  !  Grive — what  a  strange  name  ! 
It's  a  bird's  name.  You  are  not  like  it — you  do  not  belong  to  it. 
But  David! — ah,  that  is  better.  Voyonsf 

She  sprang  up,  ran  over  to  the  furthest  easel,  and,  routing 
about  amongst  its  disorder  of  prints  and  photographs,  she  hit 
upon  one,  which  she  held  up  triumphantly. 

'  There,  Monsieur ! — there  is  your  prototype.  That  is  David — 
the  young  David — scourge  of  the  Philistine.  You  are  bigger  and 
broader.  I  would  rather  fight  him  than  you — but  it  is  like  you, 
all  the  same.  Take  it.' 

And  she  held  out  to  him  a  photograph  of  the  Donatello  David 
at  Florence — the  divine  young  hero  in  his  shepherd's  hat,  fresh 
from  the  slaying  of  the  oppressor. 

He  looked  at  it,  red  and  wondering,  then  shook  his  head. 

'  What  is  it  ?    Who  made  it,  Mademoiselle  ? ' 

'  Donatello — oh,  I  never  saw  it.  I  was  never  in  Italy,  but  a 
friend  gave  it  me.  It  is  like  you,  I  tell  you.  But,  what  use  is 
that  ?  You  are  English — yes,  you  are,  in  spite  of  your  mother. 
It  is  very  well  to  be  called  David — you  may  be  Goliath  all  the 
time  ! ' 

Her  tone  had  grown  hard  and  dry — insulting  almost.  Her 
look  sent  him  a  challenge. 

He  stared  at  her  dumbfounded.  All  the  self-confidence  with 
which  ho  had  hitherto  governed  his  own  world  had  deserted  him. 
He  was  like  a  tongue-tied  child  in  her  hands. 

She  enjoyed  her  mastery,  and  his  discomfiture.  Her  look 
changed  and  melted  in  an  instant. 

'  I  am  rude,'  she  said,  'and  you  can't  answer  me  back — not 
yet — for  a  day  or  two.  Pardon!  Monsieur  David — Mademoi-. 
selle — will  you  come  to  supper  ? ' 

She  put  chairs  and  waved  them  to  their  places  with  the  joyous 
animation  of  a  child,  waiting  on  them,  fetching  this  and  that, 
with  the  quickest,  most  graceful  motions.  She  had  brought  from 
the  armoire  some  fine  white  napkins,  and  now  she  produced  a 
glass  or  two  and  made  her  guests  provide  themselves  with  the  red 
wine  which  neither  had  ever  tasted  before,  and  over  which  Louie 
made  an  involuntary  face.  Then  she  began  to  chatter  and  to 
eat — both  as  fast  as  possible — now  laughing  at  her  own  English 
or  at  David's  French,  and  now  laying  down  her  knife  and  fork 
that  she  might  look  at  Louie,  with  an  intent  professional  look 


270  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

which  contrasted  oddly  with  the  wild  freedom  of  her  talk  and 
movements. 

Suddenly  she  took  up  a  wineglass  and  held  it  out  to  David 
with  a  piteous  childish  gesture. 

'  Fill  it,  Monsieur,  and  then  drink — drink  to  my  good  luck.  I 
wish  for  something — with  my  life — my  soul ;  but  there  are  people 
who  hate  me,  who  would  delight  to  see  me  crushed.  And  it  will 
be  three  weeks — three  long  long  weeks,  almost — before  I  know.' 

She  was  very  pale,  the  tears  had  sprung  to  her  eyes,  and  the 
hand  holding  the  glass  trembled.  David  flushed  and  frowned  in 
the  vain  desire  to  understand  her. 

'  What  am  I  to  do  ?'  he  said,  taking  the  glass  mechanically, 
but  making  no  use  of  it. 

'  Drink  ! — drink  to  my  success.  I  have  two  pictures,  Mon- 
sieur, in  the  Salon  ;  you  know  what  that  means  ?  the  same  as 
your  Academic  ?  Parfaitement !  ah  !  you  understand.  One  is 
well  hung,  on  the  line  ;  the  other  has  been  shamefully  treated — 
but  shamefully  !  And  all  the  world  knows  why.  I  have  some 
enemies  on  the  jury,  and  they  delight  in  a  mean  triumph  over 
me — a  triumph  which  is  a  scandal.  But  I  have  friends,  too — 
good  friends — and  in  three  weeks  the  rewards  will  be  voted. 
You  understand  ?  the  medals,  and  the  mentions  honorables.  As 
for  a  medal — no  !  I  am  only  two  years  in  the  atelier  ;  I  am  not 
unreasonable.  But  a  mention  ! — ah  !  Monsieur  David,  if  they 
don't  give  it  me  I  shall  be  very  miserable.' 

Her  voice  had  gone  through  a  whole  gamut  of  emotion  in  this 
speech — pride,  elation,  hope,  anger,  offended  dignity — sinking 
finally  to  the  plaintive  note  of  a  child  asking  for  consolation. 

And  luckily  David  had  followed  her.  His  French  novels  had 
brought  him  across  the  Salon  and  the  jury  system  ;  and  Barbier 
had  told  him  tales.  His  courage  rose.  He  poured  the  wine  into 
the  glass  with  a  quick,  uncertain  hand,  and  raised  it  to  his  lips. 

'  A  la  gloire  de  Mademoiselle  !  '  he  cried,  tossing  it  down  with 
a  gesture  almost  as  free  and  vivid  as  her  own. 

Her  eye  followed  him  with  excitement,  taking  in  every  detail 
of  the  action — the  masculine  breadth  of  chest,  the  beauty  of  the 
dark  head  and  short  upper  lip. 

'  Very  good — very  good  ! '  she  said,  clapping  her  small  hands. 
'  You  did  that  admirably — you  improve — rfest-ce  pas,  Made- 
moiselle ? ' 

But  Louie  only  stared  blankly  and  somewhat  haughtily  in  re- 
turn. She  was  beginning  to  be  tired  of  her  silent  role,  and  of  the 
sort  of  subordination  it  implied.  The  French  girl  seemed  to 
divine  it,  and  her. 

'She  does  not  like  me,'  she  said,  with  a  kind  of  wonder 
under  her  breath,  so  that  David  did  not  catch  the  words.  '  The 
other  is  quite  different.' 

Then,  springing  up,  she  searched  in  the  pockets  of  her  jacket 
for  something — lips  pursed,  brows  knitted,  as  though  the  quest 
were  important. 


CHAP,  ii  STORM   AND   STRESS  271 

'  Where  are  my  cigarettes  ? '  she  demanded  sharply.  '  Ah  ! 
here  they  are.  Mademoiselle — Monsieur.' 

Louie  laughed  rudely,  pushing  them  back  without  a  word. 
Then  she  got  up,  and  began  boldly  to  look  about  her.  The  shoes 
attracted  her,  and  some  Algerian  scarves  and  burnouses  that 
were  lying  on  a  distant  chair.  She  went  to  turn  them  over. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  looked  after  her  for  a  moment — with 
the  same  critical  attention  as  before — then  with  a  shrug  she 
threw  herself  into  a  corner  of  the  divan,  drawing  about  her  a  bit 
of  old  embroidered  stuff  which  lay  there.  It  was  so  flung, 
however,  as  to  leave  one  dainty  foot  in  an  embroidered  silk 
stocking  visible  beyond  it.  The  tone  of  the  stocking  was  re- 
peated in  the  bunch  of  violets  at  her  neck,  and  the  purples  of  the 
flowers  told  with  charming  effect  against  her  white  skin  and  the 
pale  fawn  colour  of  her  dress  and  hair.  David  watched  her 
with  intoxication.  She  could  hardly  be  taller  than  most  children 
of  fourteen,  but  her  proportions  were  so  small  and  delicate  that 
her  height,  whatever  it  was,  seemed  to  him  the  perfect  height 
for  a  woman.  She  handled  her  cigarette  with  mannish  airs  ; 
unless  it  were  some  old  harridan  in  a  collier's  cottage,  he  had 
never  seen  a  woman  smoke  before,  and  certainly  he  had  never 
guessed  it  could  become  her  so  well.  Not  pretty  !  He  was  in  no 
mood  to  dissect  the  pale  irregular  face  with  its  subtleties  of  line 
and  expression  ;  but,  as  she  sat  there  smoking  and  chatting,  she 
was  to  him  the  realisation — the  climax  of  his  dream  of  Paris. 
All  the  lightness  and  grace  of  that  dream,  the  strangeness,  the 
thrill  of  it  seemed  to  have  passed  into  her. 

4  Will  you  stay  in  those  rooms  ? '  she  inquired,  slowly  blowing 
away  the  curls  of  smoke  in  front  of  her. 

David  replied  that  he  could  not  yet  decide.  He  looked  as  he 
felt — in  a  difficulty. 

'  Oh  !  you  will  do  well  enough  there.  But  your  sister — 
Tenez  !  There  is  a  family  on  the  floor  below — an  artist  and  his 
wife.  I  have  known  them  take  pensionnaires.  They  are  not 
the  most  distinguished  persons  in  the  world — mats  etifin  ! — it  is 
not  for  long.  Your  sister  might  do  worse  than  board  with  them.' 

David  thanked  her  eagerly.  He  would  make  all  inquiries. 
He  had  in  his  pocket  a  note  of  introduction  from  Dubois  to 
Madame  Cervin,  and  another,  he  believed,  to  the  gentleman  on 
the  ground  floor — to  M.  Montjoie,  the  sculptor. 

4  Ah  1  M.  Montjoie  ! ' 

Her  brows  went  up,  her  grey  eyes  flashed.  As  for  her  tone 
it  was  half  amused,  half  contemptuous.  She  began  to  speak, 
moved  restlessly,  then  apparently  thought  better  of  it. 

'  After  all,'  she  said,  in  a  rapid  undertone,  '  qiCest-ce  que  cela 
me  fait?  Allons.  Why  did  you  come  here  at  all,  instead  of  to 
an  hotel,  for  so  short  a  time  ? ' 

He  explained  as  well  as  he  was  able. 

'  You  wanted  to  see  something  of  French  life,  and  French 
artists  or  writers  ? '  she  repeated  slowly,  '  and  you  come  with 


272  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

introductions  from  Xavier  Dubois  !  C'est  drole,  pa.  Have  you 
studied  art  ? ' 

He  laughed. 

'  No — except  in  books.' 

*  What  books  ? ' 

'  Novels — George  Sand's.' 

It  was  her  turn  to  laugh  now. 

'  You  are  really  too  amusing  !  No,  Monsieur,  no  ;  you  inte- 
rest me.  I  have  the  best  will  in  the  world  towards  you  ;  but  I 
cannot  ask  Consuelos  and  Teverinos  to  meet  you.  Pas  possible. 
I  regret — ' 

She  fell  into  silence  a  moment,  studying  him  with  a  merry 
look.  Then  she  broke  out  again. 

1  Are  you  a  connoisseur  in  pictures,  Monsieur  ?' 

He  had  reddened  already  under  her  persiflage.  At  this  he 
grew  redder  still. 

'I  have  never  seen  any,  Mademoiselle,'  he  said,  almost  pite- 
ously  ;  '  except  once  a  little  exhibition  in  Manchester.' 

'  Nor  sculpture?' 

'  No,'  he  said  honestly  ;  '  nor  sculpture.' 

It  seemed  to  him  he  was  being  held  under  a  microscope,  so 
keen  and  pitiless  were  her  laughing  eyes.  But  she  left  him  no 
time  to  resent  it. 

'  So  you  are  a  blank  page,  Monsieur — virgin  soil — and  you 
confess  it.  You  interest  me  extremely.  I  should  even  like  to 
teach  you  a  little.  I  am  the  most  ignorant  person  in  the  world. 
I  know  nothing  about  artists  in  books.  Mais  je  suis  artiste, 
moi  !  fllle  <T  artiste.  I  could  tell  you  tales — ' 

She  threw  her  graceful  head  back  against  the  cushion  behind 
her,  and  smiled  again  broadly,  as  though  her  sense  of  humour 
were  irresistibly  tickled  by  the  situation. 

Then  a  whim  seized  her,  and  she  sat  up,  grave  and  eager. 

'  I  have  drawn  since  I  was  eight  years  old,'  she  said  ;  '  would 
you  like  to  hear  about  it  ?  It  is  not  romantic — not  the  least  in 
the  world — but  it  is  true.' 

And  with  what  seemed  to  his  foreign  ear  a  marvellous  swift- 
ness and  fertility  of  phrase,  she  poured  out  her  story.  After  her 
mother  died  she  had  been  sent  at  eight  years  old  to  board  at  a 
farm  near  Rouen  by  her  father,  who  seemed  to  have  regarded  his 
daughter  now  as  plaything  and  model,  now  as  an  intolerable 
drag  on  the  freedom  of  a  vicious  career.  And  at  the  farm  the 
child's  gift  declared  itself.  She  began  with  copying  the  illustra- 
tions, the  saints  and  holy  families  in  a  breviary  belonging  to  one 
of  the  farm  servants  ;  she  went  on  to  draw  the  lambs,  the  carts, 
the  horses,  the  farm  buildings,  on  any  piece  of  white  wood  she 
could  find  littered  about  the  yard,  or  any  bit  of  paper  saved  from 
a  parcel,  till  at  last  the  old  cure  took  pity  upon  her  and  gave  her 
some  chalks  and  a  drawing-book.  At  fourteen  her  father,  for  a 
caprice,  reclaimed  her,  and  she  found  herself  alone  with  him  in 
Paris.  To  judge  from  the  hints  she  threw  out,  her  life  during 


CHAP,  ii  STORM  AND   STRESS  273 

the  next  few  years  had  been  of  the  roughest  and  wildest,  pro- 
tected only  by  her  indomitable  resolve  to  learn,  to  make  herself 
an  artist,  come  what  would.  '  I  meant  to  be  famous,  and  I 
mean  it  still ! '  she  said,  with  a  passionate  emphasis  which  m;ide 
David  open  his  eyes.  Her  father  refused  to  believe  in  her  gift, 
and  was  far  too  self-indulgent  and  brutal  to  teach  her.  But 
some  of  his  artist  friends  were  kind  to  her,  and  taught  her 
intermittently  ;  by  the  help  of  some  of  them  she  got  permission, 
although  under  age,  to  copy  in  the  Louvre,  and  with  hardly  any 
technical  knowledge  worked  there  feverishly  from  morning  to 
night ;  and  at  last  Taranne — the  great  Taranne,  -from  whose 
atelier  so  many  considerable  artists  had  gone  out  to  the  conquest 
of  the  public — Taranne  had  seen  some  of  her  drawings,  heard 
her  story,  and  generously  taken  her  as  a  pupil. 

Then  emulation  took  hold  of  her — the  fierce  desire  to  be  first 
in  all  the  competitions  of  the  atelier.  David  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  following  her  rapid  speech,  with  its  slang,  its  techni- 
cal idioms,  its  extravagance  and  variety  ;  but  he  made  out  that 
she  had  been  for  a  long  time  deficient  in  sound  training,  and  that 
her  rivals  at  the  atelier  had  again  and  again  beaten  her  easily  in 
spite  of  her  gift,  because  of  her  weakness  in  the  grammar  of  her 
art. 

'  And  whenever  they  beat  me  I  could  have  killed  my  conquer- 
ors ;  and  whenever  I  beat  them,  I  despised  rny  judges  and  wanted 
to  give  the  prize  away.  It  is  not  my  fault.  Je  suis  faite  comme 
$a — voila  !  I  am  as  vain  as  a  peacock  ;  yet  when  people  admire 
anything  I  do,  I  think  them  fools— fools !  I  am  jealous  and 
proud  and  absurd — so  they  all  say  ;  yet  a  word,  a  look  from  a 
real  artist — from  one  of  the  great  men  who  know — can  break  me, 
make  me  cry.  Demelez  ga.  Monsieur,  si  vous  pouvez  !  "* 

She  stopped,  out  of  breath.  Their  eyes  were  on  each  other. 
The  fascination,  the  absorption  expressed  in  the  Englishman's 
look  startled  her.  She  hurriedly  turned  away,  took  up  her  ciga- 
rette again,  and  nestled  into  the  cushion.  He  vainly  tried  to 
clothe  some  of  the  quick  comments  running  through  his  mind  in 
adequate  French,  could  find  nothing  but  the  most  commonplace 
phrases,  stammered  out  a  few,  and  then  blushed  afresh.  In  her 
pity  for  him  she  took  up  her  story  again. 

After  her  father's  sudden  death,  the  shelter,  such  as  it  was, 
of  his  name  and  companionship  was  withdrawn.  What  was  she 
to  do  ?  It  turned  out  that  she  possessed  a  small  rente  which  had 
belonged  to  her  mother,  and  which  her  father  had  never  been 
able  to  squander.  Two  relations  from  her  mother's  country  near 
Bordeaux  turned  up  to  claim  her,  a  country  doctor  and  his  sister 
— middle-aged,  devout — to  her  wild  eyes  at  least,  altogether  for- 
bidding. 

'  They  made  too  much  of  their  self-sacrifice  in  taking  me  to 
live  with  them,'  she  said  with  her  little  ringing  laugh.  '  I  said 
to  them — "My  good  uncle  and  aunt,  it  is  too  much — no  one 
could  have  the  right  to  lay  such  a  burden  upon  you.  Go  home 


274  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

and  forget  me.  I  am  incorrigible.  I  am  an  artist.  I  mean  to 
live  by  myself,  and  work  for  myself.  I  am  sure  to  go  to  the  bad 
— good  morning."  They  went  home  and  told  the  rest  of  my 
mother's  people  that  I  was  insane.  But  they  could  not  keep  my 
money  from  me.  It  is  just  enough  for  me.  Besides,  I  shall  be 
selling  soon, — certainly  I  shall  be  selling !  I  have  had  two  or 
three  inquiries  already  about  one  of  the  exhibits  in  the  Salon. 
Now  then — talk,  Monsieur  David  ! '  and  she  emphasised  the 
words  by  a  little  frown  ;  '  it  is  your  turn.' 

And  gradually  by  skill  and  patience  she  made  him  talk,  made 
him  give  her  back  some  of  her  confidences.  It  seemed  to  amuse 
her  greatly  that  he  should  be  a  bookseller.  She  knew  no 
booksellers  in  Paris  ;  she  could  assure  him  they  were  all  pure 
bourgeois,  and  there  was  not  one  of  them  that  could  be  likened 
to  Donatello's  David.  Manchester  she  had  scarcely  heard  of  ; 
she  shook  her  fair  head  over  it.  But  when  he  told  her  of  his 
French  reading,  when  he  waxed  eloquent  about  Rousseau  and 
George  Sand,  then  her  mirth  became  uncontrollable. 

'  You  came  to  France  to  talk  of  Rousseau  and  George  Sand  ? ' 
she  asked  him  with  dancing  eyes — '  Mon  Dieu  !  mon  Dieu  !  what 
do  you  take  us  for  ? ' 

This  time  his  vanity  was  hurt.  He  asked  her  to  tell  him  what 
she  meant — why  she  laughed  at  him. 

'  I  will  do  better  than  that,'  she  said  ;  '  I  will  get  some  friend 
of  mine  to  take  you  to-morrow  to  "Les  Trois  Rats.'' ' 

'What  is  "Les  Trois  Rats"?'  he  asked,  half  wounded  and 
half  mystified. 

'  "  Les  Trois  Rats,"  Monsieur,  is  an  artist's  cafe.  It  is  famous, 
it  is  characteristic  ;  if  you  are  in  search  of  local  colour  you  must 
certainly  go  there.  When  you  come  back  you  will  have  some 
fresh  ideas,  I  promise  you.' 

He  asked  if  ladies  also  went  there. 

'Some  do;  I  don't.  Conventions  mean  nothing  to  me,  as  you 
perceive,  or  I  should  have  a  companion  here  to  play  propriety. 
But  like  you,  perhaps,  I  am  Romantic.  I  believe  in  the  grand 
style.  I  have  ideas  as  to  how  men  should  treat  me.  I  can  read 
Octave  Feuillet.  I  have  a  terrible  weakness  for  those  cavaliers 
of  his.  And  garbage  makes  me  ill.  So  I  avoid  the  "  Trois  Rats."  ' 

She  fell  silent,  resting  her  little  chin  on  her  hand.  Then  with 
a  sudden  sly  smile  she  bent  forward  and  looked  him  in  the  eyes. 

'  Are  you  pious,  Monsieur,  like  all  the  English  ?  There  is 
some  religion  left  in  your  country,  isn't  there  ? ' 

'  Yes,  certainly,'  he  admitted,  '  there  was  a  good  deal.' 

Then,  hesitating,  he  described  his  own  early  reading  of  Vol- 
taire, watching  its  effect  upon  her,  afraid  lest  here  too  he  should 
say  something  fatuous,  behind  the  time,  as  he  seemed  to  have 
been  doing  all  through. 

'  Voltaire  ! ' — she  shrugged  her  little  shoulders — '  Voltaire  to 
me  is  just  an  old  perruque — a  prating  philanthropical  person 
who  talked  about  le  bon  Dieu,  and  wrote  just  what  every 


CHAP,  ii  STORM  AND  STRESS  275 

bourgeois  can  understand.  If  he  had  had  his  will  and  swept 
away  the  clergy  and  the  Church,  how  many  fine  subjects  we 
artists  should  have  lost ! ' 

He  sat  helplessly  staring  at  her.  She  enjoyed  his  perplexity 
a  minute  ;  then  she  returned  to  the  charge. 

'  Well,  my  credo  is  very  short.  Its  first  article  is  art — and 
its  second  is  art — and  its  third  is  art ! ' 

Her  words  excited  her.  The  delicate  colour  flushed  into  her 
cheek.  She  flung  her  head  back  and  looked  straight  before  her 
with  half-shut  eyes. 

'  Yes — I  believe  in  art — and  expression — and  colour — and  le 
vrai.  Velazquez  is  my  God,  and — and  he  has  too  many  prophets 
to  mention  !  I  was  devout  once  for  three  months — since  then  I 
have  never  had  as  much  faith  of  the  Church  sort  as  would  lie 
on  a  ten-sous  piece.  But' — with  a  sudden  whimsical  change  of 
voice — '  I  arn  as  credulous  as  a  Breton  fisherman,  and  as  super- 
stitious as  a  gipsy !  Wait  and  see.  Will  you  look  at  my 
pictures  ? ' 

She  sprang  up  and  showed  her  sketches.  She  had  been  a 
winter  in  Algiers,  and  had  there  and  in  Spain  taken  a  passion 
for  the  East,  for  its  colour,  its  mystery,  its  suggestions  of  cruelty 
and  passion.  She  chattered  away,  explaining,  laughing, 
haranguing,  and  David  followed  her  submissively  from  thing 
to  thing,  dumb  with  the  interest  and  curiosity  of  this  new  world 
and  language  of  the  artist. 

Louie  meanwhile,  who,  after  the  refreshment  of  supper,  had 
been  forgetting  both  her  fatigue  and  the  other  two  in  the  enter- 
tainment provided  her  by  the  shoes  and  the  Oriental  dresses, 
had  now  found  a  little  inlaid  coffer  on  a  distant  table,  full  of 
Algerian  trinkets,  and  was  examining  them.  Suddenly  a  loud 
crash  was  heard  from  her  neighbourhood. 

Elise  Delaunay  stood  still.  Her  quick  speech  died  on  her 
lips.  She  made  one  bound  forward  to  Louie  ;  then,  with  a  cry, 
she  turned  deathly  pale,  tottered,  and  would  have  fallen,  but 
that  David  ran  to  her. 

'The  glass  is  broken,'  she  said,  or  rather  gasped;  'she  has 
broken  it — that  old  Venetian  glass  of  Maman's.  Oh  !  my 
pictures  ! — my  pictures  !  How  can  I  undo  it  ?  Je  suis  perdue! 
Oh  go  ! — go  ! — go— both  of  you !  Leave  me  alone  !  Why  did  I 
ever  see  you  ? ' 

She  was  beside  herself  with  rage  and  terror.  She  laid  hold 
of  Louie,  who  stood  in  sullen  awkwardness  and  dismay,  and 
pushed  her  to  the  door  so  suddenly  and  so  violently  that  the 
stronger,  taller  girl  yielded  without  an  attempt  at  resistance. 
Then  holding  the  door  open,  she  beckoned  imperiously  to  David, 
while  the  tears  streamed  down  her  cheeks. 

'  Adieu,  Monsieur — say  nothing — there  is  nothing  to  be  said 
-go!' 

He  went  out  bewildered,  and  the  two  in  their  amazement 
walked  mechanically  to  their  own  door. 


276  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

'  She  is  mad  ! '  said  Louie,  her  eyes  blazing,  when  they 
paused  and  looked  at  each  other.  '  She  must  be  mad.  What 
did  she  say  ? ' 

'  What  happened  ? '  was  all  he  could  reply. 

'I  threw  down  that  old  glass — it  wasn't  my  fault — I  didn't 
see  it.  It  was  standing  on  the  floor  against  a  chair.  I  moved 
the  chair  back  just  a  trifle,  and  it  fell.  A  shabby  old  thing — I 
could  have  paid  for  another  easily.  Well,  I'm  not  going  there 
again  to  be  treated  like  that.' 

The  girl  was  furious.  All  that  chafed  sense  of  exclusion  and 
slighted  importance  which  had  grown  upon  her  during  David's 
tete-a-tete  with  their  strange  hostess  came  to  violent  expression 
in  her  resentment.  She  opened  the  door  of  their  room,  saying 
that  whatever  he  might  do  she  was  going  to  bed  and  to  sleep 
somewhere,  if  it  was  on  the  floor. 

David  made  a  melancholy  light  in  the  squalid  room,  and 
Louie  went  about  her  preparations  in  angry  silence.  When  she 
had  withdrawn  into  the  little  cupboard-room,  saying  carelessly 
that  she  supposed  he  could  manage  with  one  of  the  bags  and  his 
great  coat,  he  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bare  iron  bedstead, 
and  recognised  with  a  start  that  he  was  quivering  all  over — with 
fatigue,  or  excitement  ?  His  chief  feeling  perhaps  was  one  of 
utter  discomfiture,  flatness,  and  humiliation. 

He  had  sat  there  in  the  dark  without  moving  for  some 
minutes,  when  his  ear  caught  a  low  uncertain  tapping  at  the 
door.  His  heart  leapt.  He  sprang  up  and  turned  the  key  in  an 
instant. 

There  on  the  landing  stood  Elise  Delaunay,  her  arms  filled 
with  what  looked  like  a  black  bearskin  rug,  her  small  tremulous 
face  and  tear- wet  eyes  raised  to  his. 

' Pardon,  Monsieur,'  she  said  hurriedly.  'I  told  you  I  was 
superstitious — well,  now  you  see.  Will  you  take  this  rug  ? — one 
can  sleep  anywhere  with  it  though  it  is  so  old.  And  has  your 
sister  what  she  wants  ?  Can  I  do  anything  for  her  ?  No ! 
Alors — I  must  talk  to  you  about  her  in  the  morning.  I  have 
some  more  things  in  my  head  to  say.  Pardon! — et  bonsoir."1 

She  pushed  the  rug  into  his  hands.  He  was  so  moved  that 
he  let  it  drop  on  the  floor  unheeding,  and  as  she  looked  at  him, 
half  audacious,  half  afraid,  she  saw  a  painful  struggle,  as  of 
some  strange  new  birth,  pass  across  his  dark  young  face.  They 
stood  so  a  moment,  looking  at  each  other.  Then  he  made  a 
quick  step  forward  with  some  inarticulate  words.  In  an  instant 
she  was  halfway  along  the  corridor,  and,  turning  back  so  that 
her  fair  hair  and  smiling  eyes  caught  the  light  she  held,  she  said 
to  him  with  the  queenliest  gesture  of  dismissal : 

'  Au  revoir,  Monsieur  David,  sleep  well.' 


CHAP,  in  STORM  AND   STRESS  277 


CHAPTER  in 

DAVID  woke  early  from  a  restless  sleep.  He  sprang  up  and 
dressed.  Never  had  the  May  sun  shone  so  brightly  ;  never  had 
life  looked  more  alluring. 

In  the  first  place  he  took  care  to  profit  by  the  hints  of  the 
night  before.  He  ran  down  to  make  friends  with  Madame 
Merichat — a  process  which  was  accomplished  without  much  diffi- 
culty, as  soon  as  a  franc  or  two  had  passed,  and  arrangements 
had'been  made  for  the  passing  of  a  few  more.  She  was  to  take 
charge  of  the  appartement,  and  provide  them  with  their  morning 
coffee  and  bread.  And  upon  this  her  grim  countenance  cleared. 
She  condescended  to  spend  a  quarter  of  an  hour  gossiping  with 
the  Englishman,  and  she  promised  to  stand  as  a  buffer  between 
him  and  Dubois'  irate  landlord. 

'  A  job  of  work  at  Brussels,  you  say,  Monsieur  ?  Bien  ;  I  will 
tell  the  proprUtaire.  He  won't  believe  it — Monsieur  Dubois  tells 
too  many  lies  ;  but  perhaps  it  will  keep  him  quiet.  He  will  think 
of  the  return — of  the  money  in  the  pocket.  He  will  bid  me 
inform  him  the  very  moment  Monsieur  Dubois  shows  his  nose, 
that  he  may  descend  upon  him,  and  so  you  will  be  let  alone.' 

He  mounted  the  stairs  again,  and  stood  a  moment  looking 
along  the  passage  with  a  quickening  pulse.  There  was  a  sound 
of  low  singing,  as  of  one  crooning  over  some  occupation.  It 
must  be  she  !  Then  she  had  recovered  her  trouble  of  the  night 
before— her  strange  trouble.  Yet  he  dimly  remembered  that  in 
the  farm-houses  of  the  Peak  also  the  breaking  of  a  looking-glass 
had  been  held  to  be  unlucky.  And,  of  course,  in  interpreting  the 
omen  she  had  thought  of  her  pictures  aud  the  jury. 

How  could  he  see  her  again  ?  Suddenly  it  occurred  to  him 
that  she  had  spoken  of  taking  a  holiday  since  the  Salon  opened. 
A  holiday  which  for  her  meant  '  copying  in  the  Louvre. '  And 
where  else,  pray,  does  the  tourist  naturally  go  on  the  first  morn- 
ing of  a  visit  to  Paris  ? 

The  young  fellow  went  back  into  his  room  with  a  radiant  face, 
and  spent  some  minutes,  as  Louie  had  not  yet  appeared,  in 
elaborating  his  toilette.  The  small  cracked  glass  above  the 
mantelpiece  was  not  flattering,  and  David  was  almost  for  the  first 
time  anxious  about  and  attentive  to  what  he  saw  there.  Yet,  on 
the  whole,  he  was  pleased  with  his  short  serge  coat  and  his  new 
tie.  He  thought  they  gave  him  something  of  a  student  air,  and 
would  not  disgrace  even  her  should  she  deign  to  be  seen  in  his 
company.  As  he  laid  his  brush  down  he  looked  at  his  own  brown 
hand,  and  remembered  hers  with  a  kind  of  wonder— so  small  and 
white,  the  wrist  so  delicately  rounded. 

When  Louie  emerged  she  was  not  in  a  good  temper.  She 
declared  that  she  had  hardly  slept  a  wink  ;  that  the  bed  was  not 
fit  to  sleep  on  ;  that  the  cupboard  was  alive  with  mice,  and  smelt 
intolerably.  David  first  endeavoured  to  appease  her  with  the 


278  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

coffee  and  rolls  which  had  just  arrived,  and  then  he  broached  the 
plan  of  sending  her  to  board  with  the  Cervins,  which  Mademoi- 
selle Delaunay  had  suggested.  What  did  she  think  ?  It  would 
cost  more,  perhaps,  but  he  could  afford  it.  On  their  way  out  he 
would  deliver  the  two  notes  of  introduction,  and  no  doubt  they 
could  settle  it  directly  if  she  liked. 

Louie  yawned,  put  up  objections,  and  refused  to  see  anything 
in  a  promising  light.  Paris  was  horrid,  and  the  man  who  had  let 
them  the  rooms  ought  to  be  '  had  up.'  As  for  people  who  couldn't 
talk  any  English  she  hated  the  sight  of  them. 

The  remark  from  an  Englishwoman  in  France  had  its  humour. 
But  David  did  not  see  that  point  of  it.  He  flushed  hotly,  and 
with  difficulty  held  an  angry  tongue.  However,  he  was  pos- 
sessed with  an  inward  dread — the  dread  of  the  idealist  who  sees 
his  pleasure  as  a  beautiful  whole — lest  they  should  so  quarrel  as 
to  spoil  the  visit  and  the  new  experience.  Under  this  curb  he 
controlled  himself,  and  presently,  with  more  savoir  vime  than  he 
was  conscious  of,  proposed  that  they  should  go  out  and  see  the 
shops. 

Louie,  at  the  mere  mention  of  shops,  passed  into  another 
mood.  After  she  had  spent  some  time  on  dressing  they  sallied 
forth,  David  delivering  his  notes  on  the  way  down.  Both  noticed 
that  the  house  was  squalid  and  ill-kept,  but  apparently  full  of 
inhabitants.  David  surmised  that  they  were  for  the  most  part 
struggling  persons  of  small  means  and  extremely  various  occupa- 
tions. There  were  three  ateliers  in  the  building,  the  two  on  their 
own  top  floor,  and  M.  Montjoie's,  which  was  apparently  built  out 
at  the  back  on  the  ground  floor.  The  first  floor  was  occupied  by 
a  dressmaker,  the  proprietaire's  best  tenant,  according  to  Madame 
Merichat.  Above  her  was  a  clerk  in  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior, 
with  his  wife  and  two  or  three  children  ;  above  them  again  the 
Cervins,  and  a  couple  of  commercial  travellers,  and  so  on. 

The  street  outside,  in  its  general  aspect,  suggested  the  same 
small,  hard-pressed  professional  life.  It  was  narrow  and  dull ;  it 
mounted  abruptly  towards  the  hill  of  Montmartre,  with  its  fort 
and  cemetery,  and,  but  for  the  height  of  the  houses,  which  is  in 
itself  a  dignified  architectural  feature,  would  have  been  no  more 
inspiriting  than  a  street  in  London. 

A  few  steps,  however,  brought  them  on  to  the  Boulevard 
Montmartre,  and  then,  taking  the  Eue  Lafitte,  they  emerged  upon 
the  Boulevard  des  Italiens. 

Louie  looked  round  her,  to  this  side  and  that,  paused  for  a 
moment,  bewildered  as  it  were  by  the  general  movement  and 
gaiety  of  the  scene.  Then  a  lingerie  shop  caught  her  eye,  and 
she  made  for  it.  Soon  the  last  cloud  had  cleared  from  the  girl's 
brow.  She  gave  herself  with  ecstasy  to  the  shops,  to  the  people. 
What  jewellery,  what  dresses,  what  delicate  cobwebs  of  lace  and 
ribbon,  what  miracles  of  colour  in  the  florists'  windows,  what 
suggestions  of  wealth  and  lavishness  everywhere  !  Here  in  this 
world  of  costly  contrivance,  of  an  eager  and  inventive  luxury, 


CHAP,  in  STORM  AND  STRESS  279 

Louise  Suveret's  daughter  felt  herself  at  last  at  home.  She  had 
never  set  foot  in  it  before  ;  yet  already  it  was  familiar,  and  she 
was  part  of  it. 

Yes,  she  was  as  well  dressed  as  anybody,  she  concluded,  except 
perhaps  the  ladies  in  the  closed  carriages  whose  dress  could  only 
be  guessed  at.  As  for  good  looks,  there  did  not  seem  to  be  much 
of  them  in  Paris.  She  called  the  Frenchwomen  downright  plain. 
They  knew  how  to  put  on  their  clothes  ;  there  was  style  about 
them,  she  did  not  deny  that ;  but  she  was  prepared  to  maintain 
that  there  was  hardly  a  decent  face  among  them. 

Such  air,  and  such  a  sky  !  The  trees  were  rushing  into  leaf  ; 
summer  dresses  were  to  be  seen  everywhere  ;  the  shops  had  swung 
out  their  awnings,  and  the  day  promised  a  summer  heat  still 
tempered  by  a  fresh  spring  breeze.  For  a  time  David  was  content 
to  lounge  along,  stopping  when  his  companion  did,  lost  as  she 
was  in  the  enchantment  and  novelty  of  the  scene,  drinking  in 
Paris  as  it  were  at  great  gulps,  spying  to  himself  they  would 
be  at  the  Opera  directly,  then  the  Theatre-Frangais,  the  Louvre, 
the  Tuileries,  the  Place  de  la  Concorde !  Every  book  that  had 
ever  passed  through  his  hands  containing  illustrations  and  de- 
scriptions of  Paris  he  had  read  with  avidity.  He,  too,  like  Louie, 
though  in  a  different  way,  was  at  home  in  these  streets,  and  hardly 
needed  a  look  at  the  map  he  carried  to  find  his  way.  Presently, 
when  he  could  escape  from  Louie,  he  would  go  and  explore  to  his 
heart's  content,  see  all  that  the  tourist  sees,  and  then  penetrate 
further,  and  judge  for  himself  as  to  those  sweeping  and  icono- 
clastic changes  which,  for  its  own  tyrant's  purposes,  the  Empire 
had  been  making  in  the  older  city.  As  he  thought  of  the  Emperor 
and  the  government  his  gorge  rose  within  him.  Barbier's  talk 
had  insensibly  determined  all  his  ideas  of  the  imperial  regime. 
How  much  longer  would  France  suffer  the  villainous  gang  who 
ruled  her  ?  He  began  an  inward  declamation  in  the  manner  of 
Hugo,  exciting  himself  as  he  walked — while  all  the  time  it  was 
the  spring  of  1870  which  was  swelling  and  expanding  in  the  veins 
and  branches  of  the  plane  trees  above  him — May  was  hurrying 
on,  and  Worth  lay  three  short  months  ahead  ! 

Then  suddenly  into  the  midst  of  his  political  musings  and  his 
traveller's  ardour  the  mind  thrust  forward  a  disturbing  image—- 
the figure  of  a  little  fair-haired  artist.  He  looked  round  impa- 
tiently. Louie's  loiterings  began  to  chafe  him. 

'  Come  along,  do,'  he  called  to  her,  waking  up  to  the  time  ; 
'  we  shall  never  get  there.' 

'  Where  ? '  she  demanded. 

'  Why,  to  the  Louvre.' 

'  WThat's  there  to  see  there  ? ' 

'  It's  a  great  palace.  The  Kings  of  France  used  to  live  there 
once.  Now  they've  put  pictures  and  statues  into  it.  You  must 
see  it,  Louie — everybody  does.  Come  along.' 

'  I'll  not  hurry,'  she  said  perversely.  '  I  don't  care  that  about 
silly  old  pictures.' 


280  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

And  she  went  back  to  her  shop-gazing.  David  felt  for  a 
moment  precisely  as  he  had  been  used  to  feel  in  the  old  days  on 
the  Scout,  when  he  had  tried  to  civilise  her  on  the  question  of 
books.  And  now  as  then  he  had  to  wrestle  with  her,  using  the 
kind  of  arguments  he  felt  might  have  a  chance  with  her.  At  last 
she  sulkily  gave  way,  and  let  him  lead  on  at  a  quick  pace.  In 
the  Rue  Saint-Honore,  indeed,  she  was  once  more  almost  unman- 
ageable ;  but  at  last  they  were  safely  on  the  stairs  of  the  Louvre, 
and  David's  brow  smoothed,  his  eye  shone  again.  He  mounted 
the  interminable  steps  with  such  gaiety  and  eagerness  that  Louie's 
attention  was  drawn  to  him. 

'  Whatever  do  you  go  that  pace  for  ? '  she  said  crossly.  '  It's 
enough  to  kill  anybody  going  up  this  kind  of  thing  ! ' 

'It  isn't  as  bad  as  the  Downfall,'  said  David,  laughing,  'and 
I've  seen  you  get  up  that  fast  enough.  Come,  catch  hold  of  my 
umbrella  and  I'll  drag  you  up.' 

Louie  reached  the  top,  out  of  breath,  turned  into  the  first 
room  to  the  right,  and  looked  scornfully  round  her. 

'  Well  I  never  ! '  she  ejaculated.     '  What's  the  good  of  this  ? ' 

Meanwhile  David  shot  on  ahead,  beckoning  to  her  to  follow. 
She,  however,  would  take  her  own  pace,  and  walked  sulkily 
along,  looking  at  the  people  who  were  not  numerous  enough  to 
please  her,  and  only  regaining  a  certain  degree  of  serenity  when 
she  perceived  that  here  as  elsewhere  people  turned  to  stare  after  her. 

David  meanwhile  threw  wondering  glances  at  the  great 
Veronese,  at  Raphael's  archangel,  at  the  towering  Vandyke,  at 
the  'Virgin  of  the  Rocks.'  But  ho  passed  them  by  quickly.  Was 
she  here  ?  Could  he  find  her  in  this  wilderness  of  rooms  ?  His 
spirits  wavered  between  delicious  expectancy  and  the  fear  of 
disappointment.  The  gallery  seemed  to  him  full  of  copyists 
young  and  old:  beardless  rapins  laughing  and  chatting  with 
fresh  maidens  ;  old  men  sitting  crouched  on  high  seats  with  vast 
canvases  before  them ;  or  women,  middle-aged  and  plain,  with 
knitted  shawls  round  their  shoulders,  at  work  upon  the  radiant 
Greuzes  and  Lancrets  ;  but  that  pale  golden  head — nowhere  ! 

At  last ! 

He  hurried  forward,  and  there,  in  front  of  a  Velazquez,  he 
found  her,  in  the  company  of  two  young  men,  who  were  leaning 
over  the  back  of  her  chair  criticising  the  picture  on  her  easel. 

'  Ah,  Monsieur  David  ! ' 

She  took  up  the  brush  she  held  with  her  teeth  for  a  moment, 
and  carelessly  held  him  out  two  fingers  of  her  right  hand. 

'  Monsieur — make  a  diversion — tell  the  truth — these  gentle- 
men here  have  been  making  a  fool  of  me.' 

And  throwing  herself  back  with  a  little  laughing,  coquettish 
gesture,  she  made  room  for  him  to  look. 

'  Ah,  but  I  forgot ;  let  me  present  you.  M.  Alphonse,  this  is 
an  Englishman  ;  he  is  new  to  Paris,  and  he  is  an  acquaintance  of 
mine.  You  are  not  to  play  any  joke  upon  him.  M.  Lenain,  this 
gentleman  wishes  to  be  made  acquainted  with  art  ;  you  will 


CHAP,  in  STORM  AND  STRESS  281 

undertake  his  education — you  will  take  him  to-night  to  "Les 
Trois  Rats."  I  promised  for  you.' 

She  threw  a  merry  look  at  the  elder  of  her  two  attendants,  who 
ceremoniously  took  off  his  hat  to  David  and  made  a  polite  speech, 
in  which  the  word  enchante  recurred.  He  was  a  dark  man,  with 
a  short  black  beard,  and  full  restless  eye  ;  some  ten  years  older 
apparently  than  the  other,  who  was  a  dare-devil  boy  of  twenty. 

'  Alloiis !  tell  me  what  you  think  of  my  picture,  M.  David.' 

The  three  waited  for  the  answer,  not  without  malice.  David 
looked  at  it  perplexed.  It  was  a  copy  of  the  black  and  white 
Infanta,  with  the  pink  rosettes,  which,  like  everything  else  that 
France  'possesses  from  the  hand  of  Velazquez,  is  to  the  French 
artist  of  to-day  among  the  sacred  things,  the  flags  and  battle-cries 
of  his  art.  Its  strangeness,  its  unlikeness  to  anything  of  the  pic- 
ture kind  that  his  untrained  provincial  eyes  had  ever  lit  upon, 
tied  his  tongue.  Yet  he  struggled  with  himself. 

'  Mademoiselle,  I  cannot  explain — I  cannot  find  the  words.  It 
seems  to  me  ugly.  The  child  is  not  pretty  nor  the  dress.  But — ' 

He  stared  at  the  picture,  fascinated — unable  to  express  him- 
self, and  blushing  under  the  shame  of  his  incapacity. 

The  other  three  watched  him  curiously. 

'  Taranne  should  get  hold  of  him,'  the  elder  artist  murmured 
to  his  companion,  with  an  imperceptible  nod  towards  the  English- 
man. '  The  models  lately  have  been  too  common.  There  was  a 
rebellion  yesterday  in  the  atelier  de  femmes  ;  one  and  all  declared 
the  model  was  not  worth  drawing,  and  one  and  all  left. ' 

'  Minxes  ! '  said  the  other  coolly,  a  twinkle  in  his  wild  eye. 
'  Taranne  will  have  to  put  his  foot  down.  There  are  one  or  two 
demons  among  them  ;  one  should  make  them  know  their  place.' 

Lenain  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed — a  great,  frank 
laugh,  which  broke  up  the  ordinary  discontent  of  the  face  agree- 
ably. The  speaker,  M.  Alphonse  Duchatel,  had  been  already 
turned  out  of  two  ateliers  for  a  series  of  the  most  atrocious 
charges  on  record.  He  was  now  with  Taranne,  on  trial,  the 
authorities  keeping  a  vigilant  eye  on  him. 

Meanwhile  Elise,  still  leaning  back  with  her  eyes  on  her  pic- 
ture, was  talking  fast  to  David,  who  hung  over  her,  absorbed. 
She  was  explaining  to  him  some  of  the  Infanta's  qualities,  point- 
ing to  this  and  that  with  her  brush,  talking  a  bright,  untrans- 
latable artist's  language  which  dazzled  him,  filled  him  with  an 
exciting  medley  of  new  impressions  and  ideas,  while  all  the  time 
his  quick  sense  responded  with  a  delightful  warmth  and  eagerness 
to  the  personality  beside  him — child,  prophetess,  egotist,  all  in 
one — noticing  each  characteristic  detail,  the  drooping,  melancholy 
trick  of  the  eyes,  the  nervous  delicacy  of  the  small  hand  holding 
the  brush. 

'  David— David  !  I'm  tired  of  this,  I  tell  you  !  I'm  not  going 
to  stay,  so  I  thought  I'd  come  and  tell  you.  Good-bye  ! ' 

He  turned  abruptly,  and  saw  Louie  standing  defiantly  a  few 
paces  behind  him. 


282  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

'  What  do  you  want,  Louie  ? '  he  said  impatiently,  going  up  to 
her.  It  was  no  longer  the  same  man,  the  same  voice. 

'  I  want  to  go.     I  hate  this  ! ' 

'  I'm  not  ready,  and  you  can't  go  by  yourself.  Do  you  see ' — 
(in  an  undertone) — '  this  is  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  ? ' 

'That  don't  matter,'  she  said  sulkily,  making  no  movement. 
'If  you  ain't  going,  I  am.' 

By  this  time,  however,  Elise,  as  well  as  the  two  artists,  had 
perceived  Louie's  advent.  She  got  up  from  her  seat  with  a  slight 
sarcastic  smile,  and  held  out  her  hand. 

1  Botijour,  Mademoiselle  !  You  forgave  me  for  dat  I  did  last 
night  ?  I  ask  your  pardon — oh,  de  tout  mon  coeur  ! ' 

Even  Louie  perceived  that  the  tone  was  enigmatical.  She 
gave  an  inward  gulp  of  envy,  however,  excited  by  the  cut  of  the 
French  girl's  black  and  white  cotton.  Then  she  dropped  Elise's 
hand,  and  moved  away. 

'  Louie  ! '  cried  David,  pursuing  her  in  despair ;  '  now  just 
wait  half  an  hour,  there's  a  good  girl,  while  I  look  at  a  few  things, 
and  then  afterwards  I'll  take  you  to  the  street  where  all  the  best 
siiops  are,  and  you  can  look  at  them  as  much  as  you  like.' 

Louie  stood  irresolute. 

'  What  is  it  ? '  said  Elise  to  him  in  French.  '  Your  sister  wants 
to  go  ?  Why,  you  have  only  just  come  ! ' 

'She  finds  it  dull  looking  at  pictures,'  said  David,  with  an 
angry  brow,  controlling  himself  with  difficulty.  '  She  must  have 
the  shops.' 

Elise  shrugged  her  shoulders  and,  turning  her  head,  said  a 
few  quick  words  that  David  did  not  follow  to  the  two  men  behind 
her.  They  all  laughed.  The  artists,  however,  were  both  much 
absorbed  in  Louie's  appearance,  and  could  not  apparently  take 
their  eyes  off  her. 

'  Ah  ! '  said  Elise,  suddenly. 

She  had  recognised  some  one  at  a  distance,  to  whom  she 
nodded.  Then  she  turned  and  looked  at  the  English  girl,  laughed, 
and  caught  her  by  the  wrist. 

'  Monsieur  David,  here  are  Monsieur  and  Madame  Cervin. 
Have  you  thought  of  sending  your  sister  to  them  ?  If  so,  I  will 
present  you.  Why  not  ?  They  would  amuse  her.  Madame 
Cervin  would  take  her  to  all  the  shops,  to  the  races,  to  the  Bois. 
Que  sais-je  ? ' 

All  the  while  she  was  looking  from  one  to  the  other.  David's 
face  cleared.  He  thought  he  saw  a  way  out  of  this  impasse. 

'  Louie,  come  here  a  moment.     I  want  to  speak  to  you.' 

And  he  carried  her  off  a  few  yards,  while  the  Cervins  came  up 
and  greeted  the  group  round  the  Infanta.  A  powerfully  built, 
thickset  man,  in  a  grey  suit,  who  had  been  walking  with  them, 
fell  back  as  they  joined  Elise  Delaunay,  and  began  to  examine  a 
Pieter  de  Hooghe  with  minuteness. 

Meanwhile  David  wrestled  with  his  sister.  She  had  much 
better  let  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  arrange  with  these  people. 


CHAP,  in  STORM   AND  STRESS  283 

Then  Madame  Cervin  could  take  her  about  wherever  she  wanted 
to  go.  He  would  make  a  bargain  to  that  effect.  As  for  him,  he 
must  and  would  see  Paris — pictures,  churches,  public  buildings. 
If  the  Louvre  bored  her,  everything  would  bore  her,  and  it  was 
impossible  either  that  he  should  spend  his  time  at  her  apron- 
string,  flattening  his  nose  against  the  shop-windows,  or  that  she 
should  go  about  alone.  He  was  not  going  to  have  her  taken  for 
'  a  bad  lot,'  and  treated  accordingly,  he  told  her  frankly,  with  an 
imperious  tightening  of  all  his  young  frame.  He  had  discovered 
some  time  since  that  it  was  necessary  to  be  plain  with  Louie. 

She  hated  to  be  disposed  of  on  any  occasion,  except  by  her  own 
will  and  initiative,  and  she  still  made  difficulties  for  the  sake  of 
making  them,  till  he  grew  desperate.  Then,  when  she  had  pushed 
his  patience  to  the  very  last  point,  she  gave  way. 

4  You  tell  her  she's  to  do  as  I  want  her,'  she  said,  threaten- 
ingly. '  I  won't  stay  if  she  doesn't.  And  I'll  not  have  her  paid 
too  much.' 

David  led  her  back  to  the  rest. 

'  My  sister  consents.  Arrange  it  if  you  can,  Mademoiselle,' 
he  said  imploringly  to  Elise. 

A  series  of  quick  and  somewhat  noisy  colloquies  followed, 
watched  with  disapproval  by  the  gardien  near,  who  seemed  to  be 
once  or  twice  on  the  point  of  interfering. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  opened  the  matter  to  Madame  Cervin, 
a  short,  stout  woman,  with  no  neck,  and  a  keen,  small  eye. 
Money  was  her  daily  and  hourly  preoccupation,  and  she  could 
have  kissed  the  hem  of  Elise  Delaunay's  dress  in  gratitude  for 
these  few  francs  thus  placed  in  her  way.  It  was  some  time  now 
since  she  had  lost  her  last  boarder,  and  had  not  been  able  to  obtain 
another.  She  took  David  aside,  and,  while  her  look  sparkled  with 
covetousness,  explained  to  him  volubly  all  that  she  would  do  for 
Louie,  and  for  how  much.  And  she  could  talk  some  English  too 
— certainly  she  could.  Her  education  had  been  excellent,  she  was 
thankful  to  say. 

'  Mon  Dien,  qiCelle  est  belle  ! '  she  wound  up.  '  Ah,  Monsieur, 
you  do  very  right  to  entrust  your  sister  to  me.  A  young  fellow 
like  you — no  ! — that  is  not  convenable.  But  I — I  will  be  a  dragon. 
Make  your  mind  quite  easy.  With  me  all  will  go  well. ' 

Louie  stood  in  an  impatient  silence  while  she  was  being  thus 
talked  over,  exchanging  looks  from  time  to  time  with  the  two 
artists,  who  had  retired  a  little  behind  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
easel,  and  from  that  distance  were  perfectly  competent  to  let  the 
bold-eyed  English  girl  know  what  they  thought  of  her  charms. 

At  last  the  bargain  was  concluded,  and  the  Cervins  walked 
away  with  Louie  in  charge.  They  were  to  take  her  to  a  restaurant, 
then  show  her  the  Kue  Royale  and  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  and,  finally 
• — David  making  no  demur  whatever  about  the  expense — there 
was  to  be  an  afternoon  excursion  through  the  Bois  to  Long- 
champs,  where  some  of  the  May  races  were  being  run. 

As  they  receded,  the  man  in  grey,  before  the  Pieter  de  Hooghe, 


284  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

looked  up,  smiled,  dropped  his  eyeglass,  and  resumed  his  place 
beside  Madame  Cervin.  She  made  a  gesture  of  introduction,  and 
he  bowed  across  her  to  the  young  stranger. 

For  the  first  time  Elise  perceived  him.  A  look  of  annoyance 
and  disgust  crossed  her  face. 

'Do  you  see,'  she  said,  turning  to  Lenain ;  'there  is  that 
animal,  Montjoie  ?  He  did  well  to  keep  his  distance.  What  do 
the  Cervins  want  with  him  ? ' 

The  others  shrugged  their  shoulders. 

'  They  say  his  Maenad  would  be  magnificent  if  he  could  keep 
sober  enough  to  finish  her,'  said  Lenain  ;  '  it  is  his  last  chance  ; 
he  will  go  under  altogether  if  he  fails  ;  he  is  almost  done  for 
already. ' 

'  And  what  a  gift ! '  said  Alphonse,  in  a  lofty  tone  of  critical 
regret.  '  He  should  have  been  a  second  Barye.  Ah,  la  vie 
Parisienne — la  maudite  vie  Parisienne  ! ' 

Again  Lenain  exploded. 

'Come  and  lunch,  you  idiot,'  he  said,  taking  the  lad's  arm; 
'  for  whom  are  you  posing  ? ' 

But  before  they  departed,  they  inquired  of  David  in  the 
politest  way  what  they  could  do  for  him.  He  was  a  stranger  to 
Mdlle.  Delaunay's  acquaintance ;  they  were  at  his  service. 
Should  they  take  him  somewhere  at  night  ?  David,  in  an  effusion 
of  gratitude,  suggested  '  Les  Trois  Rats.'  He  desired  greatly  to 
see  the  artist  world,  he  said.  Alphonse  grinned.  An  appoint- 
ment was  made  for  eight  o'clock,  and  the  two  friends  walked  off. 

CHAPTER  IV 

DAVID  and  Elise  Delaunay  thus  found  themselves  left  alone.  She 
stood  a  moment  irresolutely  before  her  canvas,  then  sat  down 
again,  and  took  up  her  brushes. 

'  I  cannot  thank  you  enough,  Mademoiselle,'  the  young  fellow 
began  shyly,  while  the  hand  which  held  his  stick  trembled  a 
little.  '  We  could  never  have  arranged  that  affair  for  ourselves.' 

She  coloured  and  bent  over  her  canvas. 

'I  don't  know  why  I  troubled  myself,'  she  said,  in  a  curious 
irritable  way. 

'  Because  you  are  kind  ! '  he  cried,  his  charming  smile  break- 
ing. '  Because  you  took  pity  on  a  pair  of  strangers,  like  the 
guardian  angel  that  you  are  ! ' 

The  effect  of  the  foreign  language  on  him.  leading  him  to  a 
more  set  and  literary  form  of  expression  than  he  would  have 
naturally  used,  was  clearly  marked  in  the  little  outburst. 

Elise  bit  her  lip,  frowned  and  fidgeted,  and  presently  looked 
him  straight  in  the  face. 

'  Monsieur  David,  warn  your  sister  that  that  man  with  the 
Cervins  this  morning — the  man  in  grey,  the  sculptor,  M.  Mont- 
joie— is  a  disreputable  scoundrel  that  no  decent  woman  should 
know.' 


CHAP,  iv  STORM  AND   STRESS  285 

David  was  taken  aback. 

'  And  Madame  Cervin — ' 

Elise  raised  her  shoulders. 

'I  don't  offer  a  solution,'  she  said  ;  ' but  I  have  warned  you.' 

'  Monsieur  Cervin  has  a  somewhat  strange  appearance,'  said 
David,  hesitating. 

And,  in  fact,  while  the  negotiations  had  been  going  on  there 
had  stood  beside  the  talkers  a  shabby,  slouching  figure  of  a  man, 
with  Ibngish  grizzled  hair  and  a  sleepy  eye — a  strange,  remote 
creature,  who  seemed  to  take  very  little  notice  of  what  was 
passing  before  him.  From  various  indications,  however,  in  the 
conversation,  David  had  gathered  that  this  looker-on  must  be  the 
former  prix  de  Rome. 

Elise  explained  that  Monsieur  Cervin  was  the  wreck  of  a 
genius.  In  his  youth  he  had  been  the  chosen  pupil  of  Ingres  and 
Hippolyte  Mandrin,  had  won  the  prix  de  Home,  and  after  his 
three  years  in  the  Villa  Medicis  had  come  home  to  take  up  what 
was  expected  to  be  a  brilliant  career.  Then  for  some  mysterious 
reason  he  had  suddenly  gone  under,  disappeared  from  sight,  and 
the  waves  of  Paris  had  closed  over  him.  When  he  reappeared  he 
was  broken  in  health,  and  married  to  a  retired  modiste,  upon 
whose  money  he  was  living.  He  painted  bad  pictures  inter- 
mittently, but  spent  most  of  his  time  in  hanging  about  his  old 
haunts — the  Louvre,  the  Salon,  the  various  exhibitions,  and  the 
dealers,  where  he  was  commonly  regarded  by  the  younger  artists 
who  were  on  speaking  terms  with  him  as  a  tragic  old  bore,  with 
a  head  of  his  own  worth  painting,  however,  if  he  could  be  got  to 
sit — for  an  augur  or  a  chief  priest. 

'  It  was  absinthe  that  did  it,'  said  Elise  calmly,  taking  a  fresh 
charge  into  her  brush,  and  working  away  at  the  black  trimmings 
of  the  Infanta's  dress.  '  Every  day,  about  four,  he  disappears 
into  the  Boulevard.  Generally,  Madame  Cervin  drives  him  like  a 
sheep  ;  but  when  four  o'clock  comes  she  daren't  interfere  with 
him.  If  she  did,  he  would  be  unmanageable  altogether.  So  he 
takes  his  two  hours  or  so,  and  when  he  comes  back  there  is  not 
much  amiss  with  him.  Sometimes  he  is  excited,  and  talks  quite 
brilliantly  about  the  past — sometimes  he  is  nervous  and  depressed, 
starts  at  a  sound,  and  storms  about  the  noises  in  the  street.  Then 
she  hurries  him  off  to  bed,  and  next  morning  he  is  quite  meek 
again,  and  tries  to  paint.  But  his  hand  shakes,  and  he  can't  see. 
So  he  gives  it  up,  and  calls  to  her  to  put  on  her  things.  Then 
they  wander  about  Paris,  till  four  o'clock  comes  round  again,  and 
he  gives  her  the  slip — always  with  some  elaborate  pretence  or 
other.  Oh  !  she  takes  it  quietly.  Other  vices  might  give  her 
more  trouble.' 

The  tone  conveyed  the  affectation  of  a  complete  knowledge  of 
the  world,  which  saw  no  reason  whatever  to  be  ashamed  of  itself. 
The  girl  was  just  twenty,  but  she  had  lived  for  years,  first  with  a 
disreputable  father,  and  then  in  a  perpetual  camaraderie,  within 
the  field  of  art,  with  men  of  all  sorts  and  kinds.  There  are 


286  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

certain  feminine  blooms  which  a  milieu  like  this  effaces  with 
deadly  rapidity. 

For  the  first  time  David  was  jarred.  The  idealist  in  hirn 
recoiled.  His  conscience,  too,  was  roused  about  Louie.  He  had 
handed  her  over,  it  seemed,  to  the  custody  of  a  drunkard  and  his 
wife,  who  had  immediately  thrown  her  into  the  company  of  a  man 
no  decent  woman  ought  to  know.  And  Mademoiselle'  Delaunay 
had  led  him  into  it.  The  guardian  angel  speech  of  a  few 
moments  before  rang  in  his  ears  uncomfortably. 

Moreover,  whatever  rebellions  his  young  imagination  might 
harbour,  whatever  license  in  his  eyes  the  great  passions  might 
claim,  he  had  maintained  for  months  and  years  past  a  practical 
asceticism,  which  had  left  its  mark.  The  young  man  who  had 
starved  so  gaily  on  sixpence  a  day  that  he  might  read  and  learn, 
had  nothing  but  impatience  and  disgust  for  the  glutton  and  the 
drunkard.  It  was  a  kind  of  physical  repulsion.  And  the  woman's 
light  indulgent  tone  seemed  for  a  moment  to  divide  them. 

Elise  looked  round.     Why  this  silence  in  her  companion  ? 

In  an  instant  she  divined  him.  Perhaps  her  own  conscience 
was  not  easy.  Why  had  she  meddled  in  the  young  Englishman's 
affairs  at  all  ?  For  a  whim  ?  Out  of  a  mere  good-natured  wish  to 
rid  him  of  his  troublesome  sister  ;  or  because  his  handsome  looks, 
his  naivet^,  and  his  eager  admiration  of  herself  amused  and 
excited  her,  and  she  did  not  care  to  be  baulked  of  them  so  soon  ? 
At  any  rate,  she  found  refuge  in  an  outburst  of  temper. 

'  Ah  ! '  she  said,  after  a  moment's  pause  and  scrutiny.  '  I  see  t 
You  think  I  might  have  done  better  for  your  sister  than  send  her 
to  lodge  with  a  drunkard — that  I  need  not  have  taken  so  much 
trouble  to  give  you  good  advice  for  that !  You  repent  your  little 
remarks  about  guardian  angels  !  You  are  disappointed  in  me  ! — 
you  distrust  me  ! ' 

She  turned  back  to  her  easel  and  began  to  paint  with  head- 
long speed,  the  small  hand  flashing  to  and  fro,  the  quick  breath 
rising  and  falling  tempestuously. 

He  was  dismayed — afraid,  and  he  began  to  make  excuses  both 
for  himself  and  her.  It  would  be  all  right ;  he  should  be  close 
by,  and  if  there  were  trouble  he  could  take  his  sister  away. 

She  let  her  brushes  fall  into  her  lap  with  an  exclamation. 

'  Listen  ! '  she  said  to  him,  her  eyes  blazing — why,  he  could  not 
for  the  life  of  him  understand.  '  There  will  be  no  trouble.  What 
I  told  you  means  nothing  open — or  disgusting.  Your  sister  will 
notice  nothing  unless  you  tell  her.  But  I  was  candid  with  you — 
I  always  am.  I  told  you  last  night  that  I  had  no  scruples.  You 
thought  it  was  a  woman's  exaggeration  ;  it  was  the  literal  truth  I 
If  a  man  drinks,  or  is  vicious,  so  long  as  he  doesn't  hurl  the  fur- 
niture at  my  head,  or  behave  himself  offensively  to  me,  what  does 
it  matter  to  me  !  If  he  drinks  so  that  he  can't  paint,  and  he 
wants  to  paint,  well ! — then  he  seems  to  me  another  instance  of 
the  charming  way  in  which  a  kind  Providence  has  arranged  this 
world.  I  am  sorry  for  him,  tout  bonnement  I  If  I  could  give  the 


CHAP.  IT  STORM   AND   STRESS  287 

poor  devil  a  hand  out  of  the  mud,  I  would  ;  if  not,  well,  then,  no 
sermons  !  I  take  him  as  I  find  him  ;  if  he  annoys  me,  I  call  in 
the  police.  But  as  to  hiding  my  face  and  canting,  not  at  all ! 
That  is  your  English  way — it  is  the  way  of  our  bourgeoisie.  It  is 
not  mine.  I  don't  belong  to  the  respectables — I  would  sooner 
kill  myself  a  dozen  times  over.  I  can't  breathe  in  their  company. 
I  know  how  to  protect  myself ;  none  of  the  men  I  meet  dare  to 
insult  me  ;  that  is  my  idiosyncrasy — everyone  has  his  own.  But 
I  have  my  ideas,  and  nobody  else  matters  a  fig  to  me. — So  now, 
Monsieur,  if  you  regret  our  forced  introduction  of  last  night,  let 
me  wish  you  a  good  morning.  It  will  be  perfectly  easy  for  your 
sister  to  find  some  excuse  to  leave  the  Cervins.  I  can  give  you 
the  addresses  of  several  cheap  hotels  where  you  and  she  will  be 
extremely  comfortable,  and  where  neither  I  nor  Monsieur  Cervin 
will  annoy  you  ! ' 

David  stared  at  her.  He  had  grown  very  pale.  She,  too,  was 
white  to  the  lips.  The  violence  and  passion  of  her  speech  had 
exhausted  her  ;  her  hands  trembled  in  her  lap.  A  wave  of  emo- 
tion swept  through  him.  Her  words  were  insolently  bitter. 
Why,  then,  this  impression  of  something  wounded  and  young  and 
struggling — at  war  with  itself  and  the  world,  proclaiming  loneli- 
ness and  Sehnsuclit,  while  it  flung  anger  and  reproach  ? 

He  dropped  on  one  knee,  hardly  knowing  what  he  did.  Most 
of  the  students  about  had  left  their  work  for  a  while  ;  no  one  was 
in  sight  but  a  gardien,  whose  back  was  turned  to  them,  and  a 
young  man  in  the  remote  distance.  He  picked  up  a  brush  she 
had  let  fall,  pressed  it  into  her  reluctant  hand,  and  laid  his  fore- 
head against  the  hand  for  an  instant. 

'You  misunderstand  me,'  he  said,  with  a  broken,  breathless 
utterance.  '  You  are  quite  wrong — quite  mistaken.  There  are 
not  such  thoughts  in  me  as  you  think.  The  world  matters  noth- 
ing to  me,  either.  I  am  alone,  too ;  I  have  always  been  alone. 
You  meant  everything  that  was  heavenly  and  kind — you  must 
have  meant  it.  I  am  a  stupid  idiot !  But  I  could  be  your  friend 
— if  you  would  permit  it. ' 

He  spoke  with  an  extraordinary  timidity  and  slowness.  He 
forgot  all  his  scruples,  all  pride — everything.  As  he  knelt  there, 
so  close  to  her  delicate  slimness,  to  the  curls  on  her  white  neck, 
to  the  quivering  lips  and  great,  defiant  eyes,  she  seemed  to  him 
once  more  a  being  of  another  clay  from  himself — beyond  any  criti- 
cism his  audacity  could  form.  He  dared  hardly  touch  her,  and  in 
his  heart  there  swelled  the  first  irrevocable  wave  of  young  passion. 

She  raised  her  hand  impetuously  and  began  to  paint  again. 
But  suddenly  a  tear  dropped  on  to  her  knee.  She  brushed  it 
away,  and  her  wild  smile  broke. 

'  Bah  ! '  she  said,  '  what  a  scene,  what  a  pair  of  children  ! 
What  was  it  all  about  ?  I  vow  I  haven't  an  idea.  You  are  an 
excellent  farceur,  Monsieur  David  !  One  can  see  well  that  you 
have  read  George  Sand.' 

He  sat  down  on  a  little  three-legged  stool  she  had  brought 


288  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

with  her,  and  held  her  box  open  on  his  knee.  In  a  minute  or 
two  they  were  talking  as  though  nothing  had  happened.  She 
was  giving  him  a  fresh  lecture  on  Velazquez,  and  he  had  resumed 
his  role  of  pupil  and  listener.  But  their  eyes  avoided  each  other, 
and  once  when,  in  taking  a  tube  from  the  box  he  held,  her  fingers 
brushed  against  his  hand,  she  flushed  involuntarily  and  moved 
her  chair  a  foot  further  away. 

'  "Who  is  that  ? '  she  asked,  suddenly  looking  round  the  corner, 
of  her  canvas.  '  Mon  J>ieu  !  M.  Regnault !  How  does  he  come 
here  ?  They  told  me  he  was  at  Granada. ' 

She  sat  transfixed,  a  joyous  excitement  illuminating  every 
feature.  And  there,  a  few  yards  from  them,  examining  the  Rem- 
brandt '  Supper  at  Eminaus '  with  a  minute  and  absorbed  atten- 
tion, was  the  young  man  he  had  noticed  in  the  distance  a  few 
minutes  before.  As  Elise  spoke,  the  new-comer  apparently  heard 
his  name,  and  turned.  He  put  up  his  eyeglass,  smiled,  and  took 
off  his  hat. 

'  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  !  I  find  you  where  I  left  you,  at  the 
feet  of  the  master !  Always  at  work !  You  are  indefatigable. 
Taranne  tells  me  great  things  of  you.  "Ah,"  he  says,  "if  the 
men  would  work  like  the  women  ! "  I  assure  you,  he  makes  us 
smart  for  it.  May  I  look  ?  Good — very  good  !  a  great  improve- 
ment on  last  year—  stronger,  more  knowledge  in  it.  That  hand 
wants  study — but  you  will  soon  put  it  right.  Ah,  Velazquez  ! 
That  a  man  should  be  great,  one  can  bear  that,  but  so  great  !  It 
is  an  offence  to  the  rest  of  us  mortals.  But  one  cannot  realise 
him  out  of  Madrid.  I  often  sigh  for  the  months  I  spent  copying 
in  the  Museo.  There  is  a  repose  of  soul  in  copying  a  great 
master — don't  you  find  it  ?  One  rests  from  one's  own  efforts 
awhile — the  spirit  of  the  master  descends  into  yours,  gently, 
profoundly.' 

He  stood  beside  her,  smiling  kindly,  his  hat  and  gloves  in  his 
hands,  perfectly  dressed,  an  air  of  the  great  world  about  his  look 
and  bearing  which  differentiated  him  wholly  from  all  other 
persons  whom  David  had  yet  seen  in  Paris.  In  physique,  too, 
he  was  totally  unlike  the  ordinary  Parisian  type.  He  was  a  young 
athlete,  vigorous,  robust,  broad-shouldered,  tanned  by  sun  and 
wind.  Only  his  blue  eye — so  subtle,  melancholy,  passionate — 
revealed  the  artist  and  the  thinker. 

Elise  was  evidently  transported  by  his  notice  of  her.  She 
talked  to  him  eagerly  of  his  pictures  in  the  Salon,  especially  of  a 
certain  'Salome,'  which,  as  David  presently  gathered,  was  the 
sensation  of  the  year.  She  raved  about  the  qualities  of  it — the 
words  colour,  poignancy,  force  recurring  in  the  quick  phrases. 

'  No  one  talks  of  your  success  now,  Monsieur.  It  is  another 
word.  (Test  la  gloire  elle-meme  qui  vous  parle  a  Toreille  ! ' 

As  she  let  fall  the  most  characteristic  of  all  French  nouns,  a 
slight  tremor  passed  across  the  young  man's  face.  But  the  look 
which  succeeded  it  was  one  of  melancholy ;  the  blue  eyes  took  a 
steely  hardness. 


CHAP,  iv  STORM  AND  STRESS  289 

'  Perhaps  a  lying  spirit,  Mademoiselle.  And  what  matter,  so 
long  as  everything  one  does  disappoints  oneself  ?  What  a  tyrant 
is  art ! — insatiable,  adorable  !  You  know  it.  We  serve  our  king 
on  our  knees,  and  he  deals  us  the  most  miserly  gifts. ' 

'It  is  the  service  itself  repays,'  she  said,  eagerly,  her  chest 
heaving. 

'  True  ! — most  true  !  But  what  a  struggle  always  ! — n6  rest — 
no  content.  And  there  is  no  other  way.  One  must  seek,  grope, 
toil — then  produce  rapidly — in  a  flash — throw  what  you  have 
done  behind  you — and  so  on  to  the  next  problem,  and  the  next. 
There  is  no  end  to  it — there  never  can  be.  But  you  hardly  came 
here  this  morning,  I  imagine,  Mademoiselle,  to  hear  me  prate  !  I 
wish  you  good  day  and  good-bye.  I  came  over  for  a  look  at  the 
Salon,  but  to-morrow  I  go  back  to  Spain.  I  can't  breathe  now 
for  long  away  from  my  sun  and  my  South  !  Adieu,  Mademoi- 
selle. I  am  told  your  prospects,  when  the  voting  comes  on,  are 
excellent.  May  the  gods  inspire  the  jury ! ' 

He  bowed,  smiled,  and  passed  on,  carrying  his  lion-head  and 
k;ngly  presence  down  the  gallery,  which  had  now  filled  up  again, 
and  where,  so  David  noticed,  person  after  person  turned  as  he 
came  near  with  the  same  flash  of  recognition  and  pleasure  he  had 
seen  upon  Elise's  face.  A  wild  jealousy  of  the  young  conqueror 
invaded  the  English  lad. 

'  Who  is  he  ? '  he  asked. 

Elise,  womanlike,  divined  him  in  a  moment.  She  gave  him  a 
sidelong  glance  and  went  back  to  her  painting. 

'  That,'  she  said  quietly,  '  is  Henri  Kegnault.  Ah,  you  know 
nothing  of  our  painters.  I  can't  make  you  understand.  For  me 
he  is  a  young  god — there  is  a  halo  round  his  head.  He  has  grasped 
his  fame — the  fame  we  poor  creatures  are  all  thirsting  for.  It 
began  last  year  with  the  Prim — General  Prim  on  horseback — oh, 
magnificent ! — a  passion  ! — an  energy !  This  year  it  is  the 
"Salome."  About — Gautier — all  the  world — have  lost  their 
heads  over  it.  If  you  go  to  see  it  at  the  Salon,  you  will  have  to 
wait  your  turn.  Crowds  go  every  day  for  nothing  else.  Of 
course  there  are  murmurs.  They  say  the  study  of  Fortuny  has 
done  him  harm.  Nonsense  !  People  discuss  him  because  he  is 
becoming  a  master — no  one  discusses  the  nonentities.  They  have 
no  enemies.  Then  he  is  sculptor,  musician,  athlete — well-born 
besides — all  the  world  is  his  friend.  But  with  it  all  so  simple — 
ban  camarade  even  for  poor  scrawlers  like  me.  Je  Vadore  I ' 

'So  it  seems,'  said  David. 

The  girl  smiled  over  her  painting.  But  after  a  bit  she  looked 
up  with  a  seriousness,  nay,  a  bitterness,  in  her  siren's  face,  which 
astonished  him. 

'  It  is  not  amusing  to  take  you  in — you  are  too  ignorant. 
What  do  you  suppose  Henri  Regnault  matters  to  me  ?  His  world 
is  as  far  above  mine  as  Velazquez'  art  is  above  my  art.  But  how 
can  a  foreigner  understand  our  shades  and  grades  ?  Nothing  but 
success,  but  la  gloire,  could  ever  lift  me  into  his  world.  Then 


290  THE  HISTORY   OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  in 

indeed  I  should  bo  everybody's  equal,  and  it  would  matter  to 
nobody  that  I  had  been  a  Bohemian  and  a  declassfe.'1 

She  gave  a  little  sigh  of  excitement,  and  threw  her  head  back 
to  look  at  her  picture.  David  watched  her. 

'I  thought,'  he  said  ironically,  'that  a  few  minutes  ago  you 
were  all  for  Bohemia.  I  did  not  suspect  these  social  ambitions.' 

'All  women  have  them — all  artists  deny  them,'  she  said, 
recklessly.  '  There,  explain  me  as  you  like,  Monsieur  David, 
But  don't  read  my  riddle  too  soon,  or  I  shall  bore  you.  Allow 
me  to  ask  you  a  question.' 

She  laid  down  her  brushes  and  looked  at  him  with  the  utmost 
gravity.  His  heart  beat — he  bent  forward. 

'  Are  you  ever  hungry.  Monsieur  David  ? ' 

He  sprang  up,  half  enraged,  half  ashamed. 

'  Where  can  we  get  some  food  ? ' 

'That  is  my  affair,'  she  said,  putting  up  her  brushes.  'Be 
humble,  Monsieur,  and  take  a  lesson  in  Paris.' 

And  out  they  went  together,  he  beside  himself  with  the  delight 
of  accompanying  her,  and  proudly  carrying  her  box  and  satchel. 
How  her  little  feet  slipped  in  and  out  of  her  pretty  dress — how, 
as  they  stood  on  the  top  of  the  great  flight  of  stairs  leading  down 
into  the  court  of  the  Louvre,  the  wind  from  outside  blew  back 
the  curls  from  her  brow,  and  ruffled  the  violets  in  her  hat,  the 
black  lace  about  her  tiny  throat.  It  was  an  enchantment  to 
follow  and  to  serve  her.  She  led  him  through  the  Tuileries 
Gardens  and  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  to  the  Champs-Elysees. 
The  fountains  leapt  in  the  sun ;  the  river  blazed  between  the  great 
white  buildings  of  its  banks  ;  to  the  left  was  the  gilded  dome  of 
the  Invalides,  and  the  mass  of  the  Corps  Legislatif ,  while  in  front 
of  them  rose  the  long  ascent  to  the  Arc  de  FEtoile  set  in  vivid 
green  on  either  hand.  Everywhere  was  space,  glitter,  magnifi- 
cence. The  gaiety  of  Paris  entered  into  the  Englishman,  and 
took  possession. 

Presently,  as  they  wandered  up  the  Champs-Elysees,  they 
passed  a  great  building  to  the  left.  Elise  stopped  and  clasped 
her  hands  in  front  of  her  with  a  little  nervous,  spasmodic  gesture. 

'  That,'  she  said,  '  is  the  Salon.  My  fate  lies  there.  When  we 
have  had  some  food,  I  will  take  you  in  to  see.' 

She  led  him  a  little  further  up  the  Avenue,  then  took  him 
aside  through  cunningly  devised  labyrinths  of  green  till  they 
came  upon  a  little  cafe  restaurant  among  the  trees,  where  people 
sat  under  an  awning,  and  the  wind  drove  the  spray  of  a  little 
fountain  hither  and  thither  among  the  bushes,  if  was  gay, 
foreign,  romantic,  unlike  anything  David  had  ever  seen  in  his 
northern  world.  He  sat  down,  with  Barbier's  stories  running  in 
his  head.  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  George  Sand — inde- 
pendent, gifted,  on  the  road  to  fame  like  that  great  declassee  of 
old ;  and  he  was  her  friend  and  comrade,  a  humble  soldier,  a 
camp  follower,  in  the  great  army  of  letters. 

Their  meal  was  of  the  lightest.     This  descent  on  the  Champs- 


CHAP,  iv  STORM   AND   STRESS  291 

Elyse"es  had  been  a  freak  on  Elise's  part,  who  wished  to  do  nothing 
so  banal  as  take  her  companion  to  the  Palais  Koyal.  But  the 
restaurant  she  had  chosen,  though  of  a  much  humbler  kind  than 
those  which  the  rich  tourist  commonly  associates  with  this  part  of 
Paris,  was  still  a  good  deal  more  expensive  than  she  had  rashly 
supposed.  She  opened  her  eyes  gravely  at  the  charges  ;  abused 
herself  extravagantly  for  a  lack  of  savoir  vivre ;  and  both  with 
one  accord  declared  it  was  too  hot  to  eat.  But  upon  such  eggs 
and  such  green  peas  as  they  did  allow  themselves — a  portion  of 
each,  scrupulously  shared — David  at  any  rate,  in  his  traveller's 
ardour,  was  prepared  to  live  to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

Afterwards,  over  the  coffee  and  the  cigarettes,  Elise  taking 
her  part  in  both,  they  lingered  for  one  of  those  hours  which  make 
the  glamour  of  youth.  Confidences  flowed  fast  between  them. 
His  French  grew  suppler  and  more  docile,  answered  more  truly  to 
the  individuality  behind  it.  He  told  her  of  his  bringing  up,  of 
his  wandering  with  the  sheep  on  the  mountains,  of  his  reading 
among  the  heather,  of  'Lias  and  his  visions,  of  Hannah's  cruelties 
and  Louie's  tempers — that  same  idyll  of  peasant  life  to  which 
Dora  had  listened  months  before.  But  how  differently  told  ! 
Each  different  listener  changes  the  tale,  readjusts  the  tone.  But 
here  also  the  tale  pleased.  Elise,  for  all  her  leanings  towards  new 
schools  in  art,  had  the  Romantic's  imagination  and  the  Romantic's 
relish  for  things  foreign  and  unaccustomed.  The  English  boy 
and  his  story  seemed  to  her  both  charming  and  original.  Her 
artist's  eye  followed  the  lines  of  the  ruffled  black  head  and  noted 
the  red-brown  of  the  skin.  She  felt  a  wish  to  draw  him — a  wish 
which  had  entirely  vanished  in  the  case  of  Louie. 

'  Your  sister  has  taken  a  dislike  to  me,'  she  said  to  him  once, 
coolly.  '  And  as  for  me,  I  am  afraid  of  her.  Ah  !  and  she  broke 
my  glass  ! ' 

She  shivered,  and  a  look  of  anxiety  and  depression  invaded 
her  small  face.  He  guessed  that  she  was  thinking  of  her  pictures, 
and  began  timidly  to  speak  to  her  about  them.  When  they  re- 
turned to  the  world  of  art,  his  fluency  left  him  ;  he  felt  crushed 
beneath  the  weight  of  his  own  ignorance  and  her  accomplishment. 

1  Come  and  see  them  ! '  she  said,  springing  up.  '  I  am  tired  of 
"my  Infanta.  Let  her  be  awhile.  Come  to  the  Salon,  and  I  will 
show  you  "  Salome."  Or  are  you  sick  of  pictures  ?  What  do  you 
want  to  see  ?  (7a  tii'est  egal.  I  can  always  go  back  to  my  work.' 

She  spoke  with  a  cavalier  lightness  which  teased  and  piqued  him. 

'I  wish  to  go  where  you  go,'  he  said  flushing,  'to  see  what 
you  see.' 

She  shook  her  little  head. 

'  No  compliments,  Monsieur  David.  We  are  serious  persons, 
you  and  I.  Well,  then,  for  a  couple  of  hours,  soyons  camarades  ! ' 

Of  those  hours,  which  prolonged  themselves  indefinitely, 
David's  after  remembrance  was  somewhat  crowded  and  indistinct. 
He  could  never  indeed  think  of  Regnault's  picture  without  a 


292  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

shudder,  so  poignant  was  the  impression  it  made  upon  him  under 
the  stimulus  of  Elise's  nervous  and  passionate  comments.  It 
represented  tne  daughter  of  Herodias  resting  after  the  dance, 
with  the  dish  upon  her  knee  which  was  to  receive  the  head  of 
the  saint.  Her  mass  of  black  hair — the  first  strong  impression  of 
the  picture— stood  out  against  the  pale  background,  and  framed 
the  smiling  sensual  face,  broadly  and  powerfully  made,  like  the 
rest  of  the  body,  and  knowing  neither  thought  nor  qualm.  The 
colour  was  a  bewilderment  of  scarlets  and  purples,  of  yellow  and 
rose-colour,  of  turtle-greys  and  dazzling  flesh-tints — bathed  the 
whole  of  it  in  the  searching  light  of  the  East.  The  strangeness, 
the  science  of  it,  its  extraordinary  brilliance  and  energy,  combined 
with  its  total  lack  of  all  emotion,  all  pity,  took  indelible  hold  of 
the  English  lad's  untrained  provincial  sense.  He  dreamt  of  it  for 
nights  afterwards. 

For  the  rest — what  whirl  and  confusion  !  He  followed  Elise 
through  suffocating  rooms,  filled  with  the  liveliest  crowd  he  had 
ever  seen.  She  was  constantly  greeted,  surrounded,  carried  off 
to  look  at  this  and  that.  Her  friends  and  acquaintances,  indeed, 
whether  men  or  women,  seemed  all  to  treat  her  in  much  the  same 
way.  There  was  complete,  and  often  noisy,  freedom  of  address 
and  discussion  between  them.  She  called  all  the  men  by  their 
surnames,  and  she  was  on  half  mocking,  half  caressing  terms 
with  the  women,  who  seemed  to  David  to  be  generally  art 
students,  of  all  ages  and  aspects.  But  nobody  took  any  liberties 
with  her.  She  had  her  place,  and  that  one  of  some  predominance. 
Clearly  she  had  already  the  privileges  of  an  eccentric,  and  a 
certain  cool  ascendency  of  temperament.  Her  little  figure 
fluttered  hither  and  thither,  gathering  a  train,  then  shaking  it 
off  again.  Sometimes  and  her  friends,  finding  the  heat 

intolerable,  and  wanting  space  for  talk,  would  overflow  into  the 
great  central  hall,  with  its  cool  palms  and  statues ;  and  there 
David  would  listen  to  torrents  of  French  artistic  theory,  anecdote, 
and  blague,  till  his  head  whirled,  and  French  cleverness — con- 
veyed to  him  in  what,  to  the  foreigner,  is  the  most  exquisite  and 
the  most  tantalising  of  all  tongues — seemed  to  hii  superhuman. 

As  to  what  he  saw,  after  '  Salome,'  he  remembered  vividly 
only  three  pictures — Elise  Delau  nay's  two — a  portrait  and  a 
workshop  interior — before  which  he  stood,  lost  in  naive  wonder 
at  her  talent ;  and  the  head  of  a  woman,  with  a  thin  pale  face, 
reddish-brown  hair,  and  a  look  of  pantherish  grace  and  force, 
which  he  was  told  was  the  portrait  of  an  actress  at  the  Odeon 
who  was  making  the  world  stare — .Mademoiselle  Bernhardt.  For 
the  rest  he  had  the  vague,  distracting  impression  of  a  new  world 
— of  nude  horrors  and  barbarities  of  all  sorts — of  things  licentious 
or  cruel,  which  yet,  apparently,  were  all  of  as  much  value  in  the 
artist's  eye,  and  to  be  discussed  with  as  much  calm  or  eagerness, 
as  their  neighbours.  One  moment  he  loathed  what  he  saw,  and 
threw  himself  upon  his  companion,  with  the  half-coherent  protests 
of  an  English  idealism,  of  which  she  scarcely  understood  a  word  ; 


CHAP,  iv  STORM  AND  STRESS  293 

the  next  he  lost  himself  in  some  landscape  which  had  torn  the 
very  heart  out  of  an  exquisite  mood  of  nature,  or  in  some  scene 
of  peasant  life — so  true  and  living  that  the  scents  of  the  fields  and 
the  cries  of  the  animals  were  once  more  about  him,  and  he  lived 
his  childhood  over  again. 

Perhaps  the  main  idea  which  the  experience  left  with  him  was 
one  of  a  goading  and  intoxicating  freedom.  His  country  lay  in 
the  background  of -his  mind  as  the  symbol  of  all  dull  convention 
and  respectability.  He  was  in  the  land  of  intelligence,  where 
nothing  is  prejudged,  and  all  experiments  are  open. 

When  they  came  out,  it  was  to  get  an  ice  in  the  shade,  and 
then  to  wander  to  and  fro,  watching  the  passers-by— the  young 
men  playing  a  strange  game  with  disks  under  the  trees — the 
nurses  and  children — the  ladies  in  the  carriages — and  talking, 
with  a  quick,  perpetual  advance  towards  intimacy,  towards 
emotion.  More  and  more  there  grew  upon  her  the  charm  of  a 
certain  rich  poetic  intelligence  there  was  in  him,  stirring  beneath 
his  rawness  and  ignorance,  struggling  through  the  fetters  of 
language  ;  and  in  response,  as  the  evening  wore  on,  she  threw  off 
her  professional  airs,  and  sank  the  egotist  out  of  sight.  She 
became  simpler,  more  childish ;  her  variable,  fanciful  youth 
answered  to  the  magnetism  of  his. 

At  last  he  said  to  her,  as  they  stood  by  the  Arc  de  1'Etoile, 
looking  down  towards  Paris  : 

'  The  sun  is  just  going  down — this  day  has  been  the  happiest 
of  my  life  ! ' 

The  low  intensity  of  the  tone  startled  her.  Then  she  had  a 
movement  of  caprice,  of  superstition. 

'  Alors—assez  !  Monsieur  David,  stay  where  you  are.  Not 
another  step  ! — Adieu  ! ' 

Astonished  and  dismayed,  he  turned  involuntarily.  But,  in 
the  crowd  of  people  passing  through  the  Arch,  she  had  slipped 
from  him,  and  he  had  lost  her  beyond  recovery.  Moreover,  her 
tone  was  peremptory — he  dared  not  pursue  and  anger  her. 

Minutes  passed  while  he  stood,  spell-  and  trance-bound,  in  the 
shadow  of  the  Arch.  Then,  with  the  long  and  labouring  breath, 
the  sudden  fatigue  of  one  who  has  leapt  in  a  day  from  one  plane 
of  life  to  another — in  whom  a  passionate  and  continuous  heat  of 
feeling  has  for  the  time  burnt  up  the  nervous  power — he  moved 
on  eastwards,  down  the  Champs-Elysees.  The  sunset  was  behind 
him,  and  the  trees  threw  long  shadows  across  his  path.  Shade 
and  sun  spaces  alike  seemed  to  him  full  of  happy  crowds.  The 
beautiful  city  laughed  and  murmured  round  him.  Nature  and 
man  alike  bore  witness  with  his  own  rash  heart  that  all  is  divinely 
well  with  the  world — let  the  cynics  and  the  mourners  say  what 
they  will.  His  hour  had  come,  and  without  a  hesitation  or  a 
dread  he  rushed  upon  it.  Passion  and  youth — ignorance  and 
desire — have  never  met  in  madder  or  more  reckless  dreams  than 
those  which  filled  the  mind  of  David  Grieve  as  ne  wandered 
blindly  home. 


294  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 


CHAPTER  V 

As  David  climbed  the  garret  stairs  to  his  room,  the  thought 
of  Louie  flashed  across  his  mind  for  the  first  time  since  the  morn- 
ing. He  opened  the  door  and  looked  round.  Yes ;  all  her 
things  were  gone.  She  had  taken  up  her  abode  with  the  Cervins. 

A  certain  anxiety  and  discomfort  seized  him  ;  before  going 
out  to  the  Boulevard  to  snatch  some  food  in  preparation  for  his 
evening  at  the  '  Trois  Rats  '  he  descended  to  the  landing  below 
and  rang  the  Cervins'  bell. 

A  charwoman,  dirty  and  tired  with  much  cleaning,  opened  to 
him. 

No,  Madame  was  not  at  home.  No  one  was  at  home,  and  the 
dinner  was  spoiling.  Had  they  not  been  seen  all  day  ?  Certainly. 
They  had  come  in  about  six  o'clock  avec  une  jeune  personne  and 
M.  Montjoie.  She  thought  it  probable  that  they  were  all  at  that 
moment  down  below,  in  the  studio  of  M.  Montjoie. 

David  already  knew  his  way  thither,  and  was  soon  standing 
outside  the  high  black  door  with  the  pane  of  glass  above  it  to 
which  Madame  Merichat  had  originally  directed  him.  While  he 
waited  for  an  answer  to  his  ring  he  looked  about  him.  He  was 
in  a  sort  of  yard  which  was  almost  entirely  filled  up  by  the  sculp- 
tor's studio,  a  long  structure  lighted  at  one  end  as  it  seemed  from 
the  roof,  and  at  the  other  by  the  usual  north  window.  At  the 
end  of  the  yard  rose  a  huge  many-storied  building  which  seemed 
to  be  a  factory  of  some  sort.  David's  Lancashire  eye  distin- 
guished machinery  through  the  monotonous  windows*  and  the 
figures  of  the  operatives  ;  it  took  note  also  of  the  fact  that  the 
rooms  were  lit  up  and  work  still  going  on  at  seven  o'clock.  All 
around  were  the  ugly  backs  of  tall  houses,  every  window  flung 
open  to  this  May  heat.  The  scene  was  squalid  and  triste  save 
for  the  greenish  blue  of  the  evening  sky,  and  the  flight  of  a  few 
pigeons  round  the  roof  of  the  factory. 

A  man  in  a  blouse  came  at  last,  and  led  the  way  in  when 
David  asked  for  Madame  Cervin.  They  passed  through  the  inner 
studio  full  of  a  confusion  of  clay  models  and  casts  to  which  the 
dust  of  months  gave  the  look  and  relief  of  bronze. 

Then  the  further  door  opened,  and  he  saw  beyond  a  larger 
and  emptier  room ;  sculptor's  work  of  different  kinds,  and  in 
various  stages  on  either  side  ;  casts,  and  charcoal  studies  on  the 
walls,  and  some  dozen  people  scattered  in  groups  over  the  floor, 
all  looking  towards  an  object  on  which  the  fading  light  from  the 
upper  part  of  the  large  window  at  the  end  was  concentrated. 

What  was  that  figure  on- its  pedestal,  that  white  image  which 
lived  and  breathed  ?  Louie  ? 

The  brother  stood  amazed  beside  the  door,  staring  while  the 
man  in  the  blouse  retreated,  and  the  persons  in  the  room  were 
too  much  occupied  with  the  spectacle  before  them  to  notice  the 
new-comer's  arrival. 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND   STRESS  295 

Louie  stood  upon  a  low  pedestal,  which  apparently  revolved 
with  the  model,  for  as  David  entered,  Montjoie,  the  man  in  the 
grey  suit,  with  the  square,  massive  head,  who  had  joined  the 
party  in  the  Louvre,  ran  forward  and  moved  it  round  slightly. 
She  was  in  Greek  dress,  and  some  yards  away  from  her  was  the 
clay  study — a  maenad  with  vine  wreath,  tambourine,  thyrsus,  and 
floating  hair — for  which  she  was  posing. 

Even  David  was  dazzled  by  the  image  thus  thrown  out  before 
him.  With  her  own  dress  Louie  Grieve  seemed  to  have  laid 
aside  for  the  moment  whatever  common  or  provincial  elements 
there  might  be  in  her  strange  and  startling  beauty.  Clothed  in 
the  clinging  folds  of  the  Greek  chiton  ;  neck,  arms,  and  feet  bare; 
the  rounded  forms  of  the  limbs  showing  under  the  soft  stuff  ;  the 
face  almost  in  profile,  leaning  to  the  shoulder,  as  though  the 
delicate  ear  were  listening  for  the  steps  of  the  wine  god  ;  a 
wreath  of  vine  leaves  round  the  black  hair  which  fell  in  curly 
masses  about  her,  sharpening  and  framing  the  rosy  whiteness  of 
the  cheek  and  neck  ;  one  hand  lightly  turned  back  behind  her, 
showing  the  palm,  the  other  holding  a  torch  •,  one  foot  poised 
on  tiptoe,  and  the  whole  body  lightly  bent  forward,  as  though  for 
instant  motion  : — in  this  dress  and  this  attitude,  worn  and  sus- 
tained with  extraordinary  intelligence  and  audacity,  the  wild 
hybrid  creature  had  risen,  as  it  were,  for  the  first  time,  to  the 
full  capacity  of  her  endowment — had  eclipsed  and  yet  revealed 
herself. 

The  brother  stood  speechless,  looking  from  the  half-completed 
study  to  his  sister.  How  had  they  made  her  understand  ? — where 
had  she  got  the  dress  ?  And  such  a  dress  !  To  the  young  fellow, 
who  in  his  peasant  and  tradesman  experience  had  never  even 
seen  a  woman  in  the  ordinary  low  dress  of  society,  it  seemed  in- 
credible, outrageous.  And  to  put  it  on  for  the  purpose  of  posing 
as  a  model  in  a  room  full  of  strange  men — Madame  Cervin  was 
the  only  woman  present — his  cheek  burnt  for  his  sister  ;  and  for 
the  moment  indignation  and  bewilderment  held  him  paralysed. 

In  front  of  him  a  little  way,  but  totally  unaware  of  the  stran- 
ger's entrance,  were  two  men  whispering  and  laughing  together. 
One  held  a  piece  of  paper  on  a  book,  and  was  making  a  hurried 
sketch  of  Louie.  Every  now  and  then  he  drew  the  attention  of 
his  companion  to  some  of  the  points  of  the  model.  David  caught 
a  careless  phrase  or  two,  and  understood  just  enough  of  their 
student's  slang  to  suspect  a  good  deal  worse  than  was  actually 
said. 

Meanwhile  Montjoie  was  standing  against  an  iron  pillar, 
studying  intently  every  detail  of  Louie's  pose,  both  hands  arched 
over  his  eyes. 

'  Peate  I  did  one  ever  see  so  many  points  combined?'  he 
threw  back  to  a  couple  of  men  behind  him.  '  Too  thin — the  arms 
might  be  better — and  the  hands  a  little  common.  But  for  the 
ensemble — mon  Dieu!  we  should  make  Carpeaux's  atelier  look 
alive — hein  ?  ' 


296  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ill 

1  Take  care  ! '  laughed  a  man  who  was  leaning  against  a  cast 
a  few  feet  away,  and  smoking  vigorously.  'She  likes  it,  she  has 
never  done  it  before,  but  she  likes  it.  Suppose  Carpeaux  gets 
hold  of  her.  You  may  repent  showing  her?  if  you  want  to  keep 
her  to  yourself.' 

'Ah,  that  right  knee  wants  throwing  forward  a  trifle,'  said 
Montjoie  in  a  preoccupied  tone,  and  going  up  to  Louie,  he  spoke 
a  few  words  of  bad  English. 

'  Allow  me,  mademoiselle — put  your  hand  on  me — ainsi — vile 
I  change  dis  pretty  foot.' 

Louie  looked  down  bewildered,  then  at  the  other  men  about 
her,  with  her  great  eyes,  half  exultant,  half  inquiring.  She 
understood  hardly  anything  of  their  French.  One  of  them 
laughed,  and,  running  to  the  clay  Maenad,  stooped  down  and 
touched  the  knee  and  ankle,  to  show  her  what  was  meant.  Louie 
instinctively  put  her  hand  on  Montjoie's  shoulder  to  steady  her- 
self, and  he  proceeded  to  move  the  bare  sandalled  foot. 

One  of  the  men  near  him  made  a  remark  which  David  caught. 
He  suddenly  strode  forward. 

'  Sir  !  Have  the  goodness  to  tell  me  how  you  wish  my  sister 
to  stand,  and  I  will  explain  to  her.  She  is  not  your  model ! ' 

The  sculptor  looked  up  startled.  Everybody  stared  at  the 
intruder,  at  the  dark  English  boy,  standing  with  a  threatening 
eye,  and  trembling  with  anger,  beside  his  sister.  Then  Madame 
Cervin,  clasping  her  little  fat  hands  with  an  exclamation  of 
dismay,  rushed  up  to  the  group,  while  Louie  leapt  down  from  her 
pedestal  and  went  to  David. 

'  What  are  you  interfering  for  ? '  she  said,  pushing  Madame 
Cervin  aside  and  looking  him  full  in  the  eyes,  her  own  blazing, 
her  chest  heaving. 

'  You  are  disgracing  yourself,'  he  said  to  her  with  the  same 
intensity,  fast  and  low,  under  his  breath,  so  as  to  be  heard  only 
by  her.  '  How  can  you  expose  yourself  as  a  model  to  these  men 
whom  you  never  saw  before  ?  Let  them  find  their  own  models  ; 
they  are  a  pack  of  brutes  ! ' 

But  even  as  he  spoke  he  shrank  before  the  concentrated  wrath 
of  her  face. 

'  I  will  make  you  pay  for  it  ! '  she  said.  '  I  will  teach  you  to 
domineer.' 

Then  she  turned  to  Madame  Cervin. 

'  Come  and  take  it  off,  please  ! '  she  said  imperiously.  '  It's 
no  good  while  he  is  here.' 

As  she  crossed  the  room  with  her  free  wild  step,  her  white 
draperies  floating,  Montjoie,  who  had  been  standing  pulling  at 
his  moustaches,  and  studying  the  brother  from  under  his  heavy 
brows,  joined  her,  and,  stooping,  said  two  or  three  smiling  words 
in  her  ear.  She  looked  up,  tossed  her  head  and  laughed — a  laugh 
half  reckless,  half  farouche ;  two  or  three  of  the  other  men 
hurried  after  them,  and  presently  they  made  a  knot  in  the  further 
room,  Louie  calmly  waiting  for  Madame  Cervin,  and  sitting  on 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND  STRESS  297 

the  pedestal  of  a  bronze  group,  her  beautiful  head  and  white 
shoulders  thrown  out  against  the  metal.  Montjoie's  artist  friends 
— of  the  kind  which  haunt  a  man  whose  mceurs  are  gradually 
bringing  his  talent  to  ruin — stood  round  her,  smoking  and  talk- 
ing and  staring  at  the*English  girl  between  whiles.  The  arrogance 
with  which  she  bore  their  notice  excited  them,  but  they  could 
not  talk  to  her,  for  she  did  not  understand  them.  Only  Montjoie 
had  a  few  words  of  English.  Occasionally  Louie  bent  forward 
and  looked  disdainfully  through  the  door.  When  would  David 
be  done  prating? 

For  he,  in  fact,  was  grappling  with  Madame  Cervin,  who  was 
showing  great  adroitness.  This  was  what  had  happened  accord- 
ing to  her.  Monsieur  Montjoie — a  man  of  astonishing  talent,  an 
artist  altogether  superior — was  in  trouble  about  his  statue— could 
not  find  a  model  to  suit  him — was  in  despair.  It  seemed  that  he 
had  heard  of  mademoiselle's  beauty  from  England,  in  some  way, 
before  she  arrived.  Then  ill  the  studio  he  had  shown  her  the 
Greek  dress. 

' There  were  some  words  between  them — some  compli- 
ments, Monsieur,  I  suppose — and  your  sister  said  she  would  pose 
for  him.  I  opposed  myself.  I  knew  well  that  mademoiselle  was 
a  young  person  tout-a-fait  comme  il  faut,  that  monsieur  her 
brother  might  object  to  her  making  herself  a  model  for  M. 
Montjoie.  Mais,  man  Lieu!"1  and  the  ex-modiste  shrugged  her 
round  shoulders— '  mademoiselle  has  a  will  of  her  own.' 

Then  she  hinted  that  in  an  hour's  acquaintance  mademoiselle 
had  already  shown  herself  extremely  difficult  to  manage — mon- 
sieur would  probably  understand  that.  As  for  her,  she  had  done 
everything  possible.  She  had  taken  mademoiselle  upstairs  and 
dressed  her  with  her  own  hands — she  had  been  her  maid  and 
companion  throughout.  She  could  do  no  more.  Mademoiselle 
would  go  her  own  way. 

'  Who  were  all  these  men  ? '  David  inquired,  still  hot  and 
frowning. 

Madame  Cervin  rose  on  tiptoe  and  poured  a  series  of  voluble 
biographies  into  his  ear.  According  to  her  everybody  present 
was  a  person  of  distinction  ;  was  at  any  rate  an  artist,  and  a  man 
of  talent.  But  let  monsieur  decide.  If  he  was  dissatisfied,  let 
him  take  his  sister  away.  She  had  been  distressed,  insulted,  by 
his  behaviour.  Mademoiselle's  box  had  been  not  yet  unpacked. 
Let  him  say  the  word  and  it  should  be  taken  upstairs  again. 

And  she  drew  away  from  him,  bridling,  striking  an  attitude 
of  outraged  dignity  beside  her  husband,  who  had  stood  behind 
her  in  a  slouching  abstracted  silence  during  the  whole  scene — 
so  far  as  her  dwarf  stature  and  vulgar  little  moon-face  permitted. 

'  We  are  strangers  here,  Madame,'  cried  David.  '  I  asked  you 
to  take  care  of  my  sister,  and  I  find  her  like  this,  before  a  crowd 
of  men  neither  she  nor  I  have  ever  seen  before  I ' 

Madame  Cervin  swept  her  hand  grandiloquently  round. 

'  Monsieur  has  his  remedy !    Let  him  take  his  sister.' 


298  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  m 

He  stood  silent  in  a  helpless  and  obvious  perplexity.  What, 
saddle  himself  afresh  after  these  intoxicating  hours  of  liberty 
and  happiness?  Fetter  and  embarrass  every  moment?  Shut 
himself  out  from  freedom — from  lier  $  , 

Besides,  already  his  first  instinctive  rage  was  disappearing. 
In  the  confusion  of  this  new  world  he  could  no  longer  tell 
whether  he  was  right  or  ridiculous.  Had  he  been  playing  the 
Philistine,  mistaking  a  mere  artistic  convention  for  an  outrage  ? 
And  Louie  was  so  likely  to  submit  to  his  admonitions  ! 

Madame  Cervin  watched  him  with  a  triumphant  eye.  When 
he  began  to  stammer  out  what  was  in  effect  an  apology,  she 
improved  the  opportunity,  threw  off  her  suave  manners,  and  let 
him  understand  with  a  certain  plain  brutality  that  she  had  taken 
Louie's  measure.  She  would  do  her  best  to  keep  the  girl  in  order 
— it  was  lucky  for  him  that  he  had  fallen  upon  anybody  so 
entirely  respectable  as  herself  and  her  husband — but  she  would 
use  her  own  judgment ;  and  if  monsieur  made  scenes,  she  would 
just  turn  out  her  boarder,  and  leave  him  to  manage  as  he  could. 

She  had  the  whip-hand,  and  she  knew  it.  He  tried  to 
appease  her,  then  discovered  that  he  must  go,  and  went  with  a 
hanging  head. 

Louie  took  no  notice  of  him  nor  he  of  her,  as  he  passed 
through  the  inner  studio,  but  Montjoie  came  forward  to  meet 
the  English  lad,  bending  his  great  head  and  shoulders  with  a 
half-ironic  politeness.  Monsieur  Grieve  he  feared  had  mistaken 
the  homage  rendered  by  himself  and  his  friends  to  his  sister's 
beauty  for  an  act  of  disrespect — let  him  be  reassured  !  Such 
beauty  was  its  own  defence.  No  doubt  monsieur  did  not  under- 
stand artistic  usage.  He,  Moiitjoie,  made  allowance  for  the  fact, 
otherwise  the  young  man's  behaviour  towards  himself  and  his 
friends  would  have  required  explanation. 

The  two  stood  together  at  the  door — David  proudly  crimson, 
seeking  in  vain  for  phrases  that  would  not  come — Montjoie  cool 
and  malicious,  his  battered  weather-beaten  face  traversed  by 
little  smiles.  Louie  was  looking  on  with  scornful  amusement, 
and  the  group  of  artists  round  her  could  hardly  control  their 
mirth. 

He  shut  the  door  behind  him  with  the  feeling  of  one  who  has 
cut  a  ridiculous  figure  and  beaten  a  mean  retreat.  Then,  as  he 
neared  the  bottom  of  the  stairs,  he  gave  himself  a  great  shake, 
with  the  gesture  of  one  violently  throwing  off  a  weight.  Let 
those  who  thought  that  he  ought  to  control  Louie,  and  could 
control  her,  come  and  see  for  themselves !  He  had  done  what 
he  thought  was  for  the  best — his  quick  inner  sense  carefully 
refrained  from  attaching  any  blame  whatever  to  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay — and  now  Louie  must  go  her  own  gait,  and  he  would 
go  his.  He  had  said  his  say — and  she  should  not  spoil  this 
hoarded,  this  long-looked-for  pleasure.  As  he  passed  into  the 
street,  on  his  way  to  the  Boulevard  for  some  food,  his  walk  and 
beai'ing  had  in  them  a  stern  and  passionate  energy. 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND  STRESS  299 

He  had  to  hurry  back  for  his  appointment  with  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  friends  of  the  morning.  As  he  turned  into  the  Rue 
Clmntal  he  passed  a  flower-stall  aglow  with  roses  from  the  south 
and  sweet  with  narcissus  and  mignonette.  An  idea  struck  him, 
and  he  stopped,  a  happy  smile  softening  away  the  still  lingering 
tension  of  the  face.  For  a  few  sous  he  bought  a  bunch  of  yellow- 
eyed  narcissus  and  stepped  gaily  home  with  them.  He  had 
hardly  time  to  put  them  in  water  and  to  notice  that  Madame 
Merichat  had  made  Dubois'  squalid  abode  look  much  more 
habitable  than  before,  when  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door  and 
his  two  guides  stood  outside. 

They  carried  him  off  at  once.  David  found  more  of  a  tongue 
than  he  had  been  master  of  in  the  morning,  and  the  three  talked 
incessantly  as  they  wound  in  and  out  of  the  streets  which  cover 
the  face  of  the  hill  of  Montmartre,  ascending  gradually  towards 
the  place  they  were  in  search  of.  David  had  heard  something  of 
the  history  of  the  two  from  Elise  Delaunay.  Alphonse  was  a  lad 
of  nineteen  brimming  over  with  wild  fun  and  mischief,  and  per- 
petually in  disgrace  with  all  possible  authorities  ;  the  possessor 
nevertheless  of  a  certain  delicate  and  subtle  fancy  which  came 
out  in  the  impressionist  landscapes — many  of  them  touched  with 
a  wild  melancholy  as  inexplicable  probably  to  himself  as  to  other 
people — which  he  painted  in  all  his  spare  moments.  The  tall 
black-bearded  Lenain  was  older,  had  been  for  years  in  Taranne's 
atelier,  was  an  excellent  draughtsman,  and  was  now  just  be- 
ginning seriously  upon  the  painting  of  large  pictures  for  exhibi- 
tion. In  his  thin  long  face  there  was  a  pinched  and  anxious 
look,  as  though  in  the  artist's  inmost  mind  there  lay  hidden  the. 
presentiment  of  failure. 

They  talked  freely  enough  of  Elise  Delaunay,  David  alter- 
nately wincing  and  craving  for  more.  What  a  clever  little  devil 
it  was  !  She  was  burning  herself  away  with  ambition  and  work  ; 
Taranne  flattered  her  a  good  deal ;  it  was  absolutely  necessary, 
otherwise  she  would  be  for  killing  herself  two  or  three  times  a 
week.  Oh  !  she  might  get  her  mention  at  the  Salon.  The 
young  Solons  sitting  in  judgment  on  her  thought  on  the  whole 
she  deserved  it ;  two  of  her  exhibits  were  not  bad  ;  but  there 
was  another  girl  in  the  atelier,  Mademoiselle  Breal,  who  had 
more  interest  in  high  places.  However,  Taranne  would  do  what 
he  could  ;  he  had  always  made  a  favourite  of  the  little  Elise  ; 
and  only  he  could  manage  her  when  she  was  in  one  of  her  im- 
practicable fits. 

Then  Alphonse  put  the  Englishman  through  a  catechism,  and 
at  the  end  of  it  they  both  advised  him  not  to  trouble  his  head 
about  George  Sand.  That  was  all  dead  and  done  with,  and 
Balzac  not  much  less.  He  might  be  great,  Balzac,  but  who 
could  be  at  the  trouble  of  reading  him  nowadays  ?  Lenain,  who 
was  literary,  named  to  him  with  enthusiasm  Flaubert's  '  Madame 
Bovary  '  and  the  brothers  Goncourt.  As  for  Alphonse,  who  was 
capable,  however,  of  occasional  excursions  into  poetry,  and  could 


300  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

quote  Musset  and  Hugo,  the  feuilletons  in  the  '  Gaulois '  or  the 
'Figaro'  seemed,  ou  the  whole,  to  provide  him  with  as  much 
fiction  as  he  desired.  He  was  emphatically  of  opinion  that  the 
artist  wants  no  books  ;  a  little  poetry,  perhaps,  did  no  harm  ; 
but  literature  in  painting  was  the  very  devil.  Then  perceiving 
that  between  them  they  had  puzzled  their  man,  Alphonse  would 
have  proceeded  to  '  cram '  him  in  the  most  approved  style,  but 
thatLenain  interposed,  and  a  certain  cooling  of  the  Englishman's 
bright  eye  made  success  look  unpromising.  Finally  the  wild 
fellow  clapped  David  on  the  back  and  assured  him  that  '  Les 
Trois  Rats'  would  astonish  him.  '  Ah  !  hero  we  are.' 

As  he  spoke  they  turned  a  corner,  and  a  blaze  of  light  burst 
Upon  them,  coming  from  what  seemed  to  be  a  gap  in  the  street 
face,  a  house  whereof  the  two  lower  stories  were  wall-  and 
windowless,  though  not  in  the  manner  of  the  ordinary  cafe, 
seeing  that  the  open  parts  were  raised  somewhat  above  the 
pavement. 

'  The  patron  saint ! '  said  Alphonse,  stopping  with  a  grin  and 
pointing.  Following  the  finger  with  his  eye  David  caught  a  fan- 
tastic sign  swinging  above  him  :  a  thin  iron  crescent,  and  sitting 
up  between  its  two  tips  a  lean  black  rat,  its  sharp  nose  in  the  air, 
its  tail  curled  round  its  iron  perch,  while  two  other  creatures  of 
the  same  kind  crept  about  him,  the  one  clinging  to  the  lower  tip 
of  the  crescent,  the  other  peering  down  from  the  top  on  the  king- 
rat  in  the  middle.  Below  the  sign,  and  heavily  framed  by  the 
dark  overhanging  cave,  the  room  within  was  clearly  visible  from 
the  street.  From  the  background  of  its  black  oak  walls  and  fur- 
1  niture  emerged  figures,  lights,  pictures,  above  all  an  imposing 
chemin4e  advancing  far  into  the  floor,  a  high,  fantastic  structure 
also  of  black  oak  like  the  panelling  of  the  room,  but  overrun  with 
chains  of  black  rats,  carved  and  combined  with  a  wild  diablerie, 
and  lit  by  numerous  lights  in  branching  ironwork.  The  dim  gro- 
tesque shapes  of  the  pictures,  the  gesticulating,  shouting  crowd 
in  front  of  them,  the  mediasvalism  of  the  room  and  of  that 
strange  sign  dangling  outside  :  these  things  took  the  English 
lad's  excited  fancy  and  he  pressed  his  way  in  behind  his  com- 
panions. He  forgot  what  they  had  been  telling  him  ;  his  pulse 
beat  to  the  old  romantic  tune ;  poets,  artists,  talkers — here  he 
was  to  find  them. 

David's  two  companions  exchanged  greetings  on  all  sides, 
laughing  and  shouting  like  the  rest.  With  difficulty  they  found 
a  table  in  a  remote  corner,  and,  sitting  down,  ordered  coffee. 

'  Alphonse  !  mon  cher  !  ' 

A  young  man  sitting  at  the  next  table  turned  round  upon 
them,  slapped  Alphonse  on  the  shoulder,  and  stared  hard  at 
David.  He  had  fine  black  eyes  in  a  bronzed  face,  a  silky  black 
beard,  and  long  hair  &  la  lion,  that  is  to  say,  thrown  to  one  side 
of  the  head  in  a  loose  mane-like  mass. 

1 1  have  just  come  from  the  Salon.  Not  bad — Kegnault  ? 
Hein  ? ' 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND   STRESS.  801 

'  Non — il  arrivera,  celui-l&S  said  the  other  calmly. 

'  As  for  the  other  things  from  the  Villa  Medici  fellows,'  said 
the  first  speaker,  throwing  his  arm  round  the  back  of  his  chair, 
and  twisting  it  round  so  as  to  front  them,  '  they  make  me  sick. 
I  should  hardly  do  my  fire  the  injustice  of  lighting  it  with  some 
of  them.' 

'All  the  same,'  replied  Alphonse  stoutly,  'that  Campagna 
scene  of  D.'s  is  well  done.' 

'  Literature,  mon  cher  !  literature  1 '  cried  the  unknown,  '  and 
what  the  deuce  do  we  want  with  literature  in  painting?' 

He  brought  his  fist  down  violently  on  the  table. 

'  Connu,'  said  Alphonse  scornfully.  '  Don't  excite  yourself. 
But  the  story  in  D.'s  picture  doesn't  matter  a  halfpenny.  Who 
cares  what  the  figures  are  doing?  It's  the  brush  work  and  the 
values  I  look  to.  How  did  he  get  all  that  relief — that  brilliance? 
No  sunshine — no  local  colour — and  the  thing  glows  like  a  Bern- 
brand  t  ! ' 

The  boy's  mad  blue  eyes  took  a  curious  light,  as  though  some 
inner  enthusiasm  had  stirred. 

'  Peuh  !  we  all  know  you,  Alphonse.  Say  what  you  like,  you 
want  something  else  in  a  picture  than  painting.  That'll  damn 
you,  and  make  your  fortune  some  day,  I  warn  you.  Now  /have 
got  a  picture  on  the  easel  that  will  make  the  bourgeois  skip.' 

And  the  speaker  passed  a  large  tremulous  hand  through  his 
waves  of  hair,  his  lip  also  quivering  with  the  nervousness  of  a 
man  overworked  and  overdone. 

'You'll  not  send  it  to  the  Salon,  I  imagine,'  said  another  man 
beside  him,  dryly.  He  was  fair,  small  and  clean-shaven,  wore 
spectacles,  and  had  the  look  of  a  clerk  or  man  of  business. 

'  Yes,  I  shall .  '  cried  the  other  violently — his  name  was 
Dumesnil — '  I'll  fling  it  at  their  heads.  That's  all  our  school  can 
do — make  a  scandal. ' 

'Well,  that  has  even  been  known  to  make  money,'  said  the 
other,  fingering  his  watch-chain  with  a  disagreeable  little  smile. 

'  Money  ! '  shouted  Dumesnil,  and  swinging  round  to  his  own 
table  again  he  poured  out  hot  denunciations  of  the  money-grab- 
bing reptiles  of  to-day  who  shelter  themselves  behind  the  sacred 
name  of  art.  Meanwhile  the  man  at  whom  it  was  all  levelled 
sipped  his  coffee  quietly  and  took  no  notice. 

'  Ah,  a  song  ! '  cried  Alphonse.  '  Lenain,  vois-tu  %  It's  that 
little  devil  Perinot.  He's  been  painting  churches  down  near 
Toulouse,  his  own  country.  Saints  by  the  dozen,  like  this,'  and 
Alphonse  drooped  his  eyes  and  crossed  his  limp  hands,  taking  off 
the  frescoed  mediaeval  saint  for  an  instant,  as  only  the  Parisian 
gamin  can  do  such  things.  '  You  should  see  him  with  a  cure. 
However,  the  cures  don't  follow  him  here,  more's  the  pity.  Ah  ! 
tr&s  bien — tres  bien  ! ' 

These  plaudits  were  called  out  by  some  passages  on  the 
guitar  with  which  the  singer  was  prefacing  his  song.  His  chair 
had  been  mounted  on  to  a  table,  so  that  all  the  world  could  see 


302  THE  HISTORY   OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

and  hear.  A  hush  of  delighted  attention  penetrated  the  room  ; 
and  outside,  in  the  street,  David  could  see  dark  forms  gathering 
on  the  pavement. 

The  singer  was  a  young  man,  undersized  and  slightly 
deformed,  with  close-cut  hair,  and  a  large  face,  droll,  pliant 
and  ugly  as  a  gutta-percha  mask.  Before  he  opened  his  lips 
the  audience  laughed. 

David  listened  with  all  his  ears,  feeling  through  every  fibre 
the  piquant  strangeness  of  the  scene — alive  with  the  foreigner's 
curiosity,  and  with  youth's  pleasure  in  mere  novelty.  And  what 
clever  fellows,  what  dash,  what  camaraderie  !  That  old  imagi- 
native drawing  towards  France  and  the  French  was  becoming 
something  eagerly  personal,  combative  almost, — and  in  the 
background  of  his  mind  throughout  was  the  vibrating  memory 
of  the  day  just  past — the  passionate  sense  of  a  new  life. 

The  song  was  tumultuously  successful.  The  whole  crowded 
salle,  while  it  was  going  on,  was  one  sea  of  upturned  faces,  and  it 
was  accompanied  at  intervals  by  thunders  of  applause,  given  out 
by  means  of  sticks,  spoons,  fists,  or  anything  else  that  might  come 
handy.  It  recounted  the  adventures  of  an  artist  and  his  model. 
As  it  proceeded,  a  slow  crimson  rose  into  the  English  lad's  cheek, 
overspread  his  forehead  and  neck.  He  sat  staring  at  the  singer, 
or  looking  round  at  the  absorbed  attention  and  delight  of  his 
companions.  By  the  end  of  it  David,  his  face  propped  on  his 
hands,  was  trying  nervously  to  decipher  the  names  and  devices 
cut  in  the  wood  of  the  table  on  which  he  leant.  His  whole  being 
was  in  a  surge  of  physical  loathing — the  revulsion  of  feeling  was 
bewildering  and  complete.  So  this  was  what  Frenchmen  thought 
of  women,  what  they  could  say  of  them,  when  the  mask  was  off, 
and  they  were  at  their  ease.  The  witty  brutality,  the  naked 
coarseness  of  the  thing  scourged  the  boy's  shrinking  sense. 
Freedom,  passion — yes !  but  this  !  In  his  wild  recoil  he  stood 
again  under  the  Arc  de  Triomphe  watching  her  figure  disappear. 
Ah  !  pardon  !  That  he  should  be  listening  at  all  seemed  to  a 
conscience,  an  imagination  quickened  by  first  love,  to  be  an 
outrage  to  women,  to  love,  to  her  ! 

Yet — how  amusing  it  was !  how  irresistible,  as  the  first 
shock  subsided,  was  the  impression  of  sparkling  verse,  of  an 
astonishing  mimetic  gift  in  the  singer  !  Towards  the  end  he 
had  just  made  up  his  mind  to  go  on  the  first  pretext,  when  he 
found  himself,  to  his  own  disgust,  shaking  with  laughter. 

He  recovered  himself  after  a  while,  resolved  to  stay  it  out, 
and  betrayed  nothing.  The  comments  made  by  his  two  com- 
panions on  the  song — consisting  mainly  of  illustrative  anecdote 
— were  worthy  of  the  occasion.  David  sat,  however,  without 
flinching,  his  black  eyes  hardening,  laughing  at  intervals. 

Presently  the  room  rose  en  bloc,  and  there  was  a  move 
towards  the  staircase. 

'The  manager,  M.  Edmond,  has  come,'  explained  Alphonse  ; 
'  they  are  going  upstairs  to  the  concert-room.  They  will  have  a 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND   STRESS  303 

recitation  perhaps, — ombres  chinoises, — music.     Come  and  look 
at  the  drawings  before  we  go.' 

And  he  took  his  charge  round  the  walls,  which  were  papered 
with  drawings  and  sketches,  laughing  and  explaining.  The 
drawings  were  done,  in  the  main,  according  to  him,  by  the 
artists  on  the  staffs  of  two  illustrated  papers  which  had  their 
headquarters  at  the  '  Trois  Eats.'  David  was  especially  seized 
by  the  innumerable  sheets  of  animal  sketches — series  in  which 
some  episode  of  animal  life  was  carried  through  from  its  begin- 
ning to  a  close,  sometimes  humorous,  but  more  often  tragic.  In 
a  certain  number  of  them  there  was  a  free  imagination,  an  irony, 
a  pity,  which  linked  them  together,  marked  them  as  the  con- 
ceptions of  one  brain.  Alphonse  pointed  to  them  as  the  work  of 
a  clever  fellow,  lately  dead,  who  had  been  launched  and  supported 
by  the  '  Trois  Rats '  and  its  frequenters.  One  series  in  particular, 
representing  a  robin  overcome  by  the  seduction  of  a  glass  of 
absinthe  and  passing  through  all  the  stages  of  delirium  tremens, 
had  a  grim  inventiveness,  a  fecundity  of  half  humorous,  half 
pathetic  fancy,  which  held  David's  eye  riveted. 

'  As  for  the  ballet-girl,  she  was  everywhere,  with  her  sisters, 
the  model  and  the  grisette.  And  the  artistic  ability  shown  in 
the  treatment  of  her  had  nowhere  been  hampered  by  any 
Philistine  scruple  in  behalf  of  decency. 

Upstairs  there  was  the  same  mixed  experience.  David  found 
himself  in  a  corner  with  his  two  acquaintances,  and  four  or  five 
others,  a  couple  of  journalists,  a  musician  and  a  sculptor.  The 
conversation  ranged  from  art  to  religion,  from  religion  to  style, 
from  style  to  women,  and  all  with  a  perpetual  recurrence  either 
to  the  pictures  and  successes  of  the  Salon,  or  to  the  liaisons  of 
well-known  artists. 

'  Why  do  none  of  us  fellows  in  the  press  pluck  up  courage 
and  tell  H.  what  we  really  think  about  those  Homeric  machines 
of  his  which  he  turns  out  year  after  year  ? '  said  a  journalist, 
who  was  smoking  beside  him,  an  older  man  than  the  rest  of 
them.  'I  have  a  hundred  things  I  want  to  say — but  H.  is 
popular — -I  like  him  himself — and  I  haven't  the  nerve.  But 
what  the  devil  do  we  want  with  the  Greeks — they  painted  their 
world — let  us  paint  ours  !  Besides,  it  is  an  absurdity.  I  thought 
as  I  was  looking  at  H.'s  things  this  morning  of  what  Preault 
used  to  say  of  Pradier  :  "  H  partait  tous  les  matins  pour  la 
Gfreee  et  arrivait  tous  les  soirs  Rue  de  Breda.'1''  Pose  your 
goddesses  as  you  please — they  are  grisettes  all  the  same.' 

'All  very  well  for  you  critics,'  growled  a  man  smoking  a 
long  pipe  beside  him  ;  '  but  the  artist  must  live,  and  the  bourgeois 
will  have  subjects.  He  won't  have  anything  to  do  with  your 
"notes" — and  "impressions" — and  "arrangements."  When 
you  present  him  with  the  view,  served  hot,  from  your  four- 
pair  back — he  buttons  up  his  pockets  and  abuses  you.  He 
wants  his  stories  and  his  sentiment.  And  where  the  deuce  is 
t-ie  sentiment  to  be  got  ?  I  should  be  greatly  obliged  to  anyone 


304  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

who  would  point  me  to  a  little  of  the  commodity.     The  Greeks 
are  already  ridiculous, — and  as  for  religion — ' 

The  speaker  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed  silently. 

'  Ah  !  I  agree  with  you,'  said  the  other  emphatically ;  '  the 
religious  pictures  this  year  are  really  too  bad.  Christianity  is 
going  too  fast — for  the  artist. ' 

'And  the  sceptics  are  becoming  bores,'  cried  the  painter; 
'  they  take  themselves  too  seriously.  It  is,  after  all,  only 
another  dogmatism.  One  should  believe  in  nothing — not  even 
in  one's  doubts.' 

1  Yes,'  replied  the  journalist,  knocking  out  his  pipe,  with  a 
sardonic  little  smile — '  strange  fact  1  One  may  swim  in  free 
thought  and  remain  as  banal  as  a  bishop  all  the  time. ' 

'  I  say,'  shouted  a  fair-haired  youth  opposite,  '  who  has  seen 
C.'s  Holy  Family  ?  Who  knows  where  he  got  his  Madonna  ?' 

Nobody  knew,  and  the  speaker  had  the  felicity  of  imparting 
an  entirely  fresh  scandal  to  attentive  ears.  The  mixture  in  the 
story  of  certain  brutalities  of  modern  manners  with  names  and 
things  still  touching  or  sacred  for  the  mass  of  mankind  had  the 
old  Voltairean  flavour.  But  somehow,  presented  in  this  form 
and  at  this  moment,  David  no  longer  found  it  attractive.  He 
sat  nursing  his  knee,  his  dark  brows  drawn  together,  studying 
the  story-teller,  whose  florid  Norman  complexion  and  blue  eyes 
were  already  seared  by  a  vicious  experience. 

The  tale,  however,  was  interrupted  and  silenced  by  the  first 
notes  of  a  piano.  The  room  was  now  full,  and  a  young  actor 
from  the  Gymnase  company  was  about  to  give  a  musical  sketch. 
The  subject  of  it  was  '  St.  Francis  and  Santa  Clara.' 

This  performance  was  perhaps  more  wittily  broad  than  any- 
thing which  had  gone  before.  The  audience  was  excessively 
amused  by  it.  It  was  indeed  the  triumph  of  the  evening,  and 
nothing  could  exceed  the  grace  and  point  of  the  little  speech  in 
which  M.  Edmond,  the  manager  of  the  cafe,  thanked  the  accom- 
plished singer  afterwards. 

While  it  was  going  on,  David,  always  with  that  poignant, 
shrinking  thought  of  Elise  at  his  heart,  looked  round  to  see  if 
there  were  any  women  present.  Yes,  there  were  three.  Two 
were  young,  outrageously  dressed,  with  sickly  pretty  tired  faces. 
The  third  was  a  woman  in  middle  life,  with  short  hair  parted  at 
the  side,  and  a  strong,  masculine  air.  Her  dress  was  as  nearly  as 
possible  that  of  a  man,  and  she  was  smoking  vigorously.  The 
rough  bonhomie  of  her  expression  and  her  professional  air  re- 
minded David  once  more  of  George  Sand.  An  artist,  he  sup- 
posed, or  a  writer. 

Suddenly,  towards  the  end  of  the  sketch,  he  became  conscious 
of  a  tall  figure  behind  the  singer,  a  man  standing  with  his  hat 
in  his  hand,  as  though  he  had  just  come  in,  and  were  just  going 
away.  His  fine  head  was  thrown  back,  his  look  was  calm,  David 
thought  disdainful.  Bending  forward  he  recognised  M.  Regnault, 
the  hero  of  the  morning. 


CHAP,  v  STORM   AND   STRESS  305 

Kegnault  had  come  in  unperceived  while  the  dramatic  piece 
was  going  on  ;  but  it  was  no  sooner  over  than  he  was  discovered, 
and  the  whole  salle  rose  to  do  him  honour.  The  generosity,  the 
extravagance  of  the  ovation  offered  to  the  young  painter  by  this 
hundred  or  two  of  artists  and  men  of  letters  were  very  striking 
to  the  foreign  eye.  David  found  himself  thrilling  and  applauding 
with  the  rest.  The  room  had  passed  in  an  instant  from  cynicism 
to  sentiment.  A  moment  ago  it  had  been  trampling  to  mud  the 
tenderest  feeling  of  the  past ;  it  was  now  eagerly  alive  with  the 
feeling  of  the  present. 

The  new-comer  protested  that  he  had  only  dropped  in,  being 
in  the  neighbourhood,  and  must  not  stay.  He  was  charming  to 
them  all,  asked  after  this  man's  picture  and  that  man's  statue, 
talked  a  little  about  the  studio  he  was  organising  at  Tangiers, 
and  then,  shaking  hands  right  and  left,  made  his  way  through 
the  crowd. 

As  he  passed  David,  his  quick  eye  caught  the  stranger  and  he 
paused. 

'  Were  you  not  in  the  Louvre  this  morning  with  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  ? '  he  asked,  lowering  his  voice  a  little  ;  '  you  are  a 
stranger  ? ' 

'Yes,  an  Englishman,'  David  stammered,  taken  by  surprise. 
Kegnault's  look  swept  over  the  youth's  face,  kindling  in  an 
instant  with  the  artist's  delight  in  beautiful  line  and  tint. 

'  Are  you  going  now  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  said  David  hurriedly.     '  It  must  be  late  ? ' 

'  Midnight,  past.     May  I  walk  with  you  ? ' 

David,  overwhelmed,  made  some  hurried  excuses  to  his  two 
companions,  and  found  himself  pushing  his  way  to  the  door,  an 
unnoticed  figure  in  the  tumult  of  Regnault's  exit. 

When  they  got  into  the  street  outside,  Begnault  walked  fast 
southwards  for  a  minute  or  so  without  speaking.  Then  he 
stopped  abruptly,  with  the  gesture  of  one  shaking  off  a  weight. 

4  Pah  !  this  Paris  chokes  me.' 

Then,  walking  on  again,  he  said,  half-coherently,  and  to 
himself  : 

'  So  vile, — so  small, — so  foul !  And  there  are  such  great 
things  in  the  world.  Beasts  ! — pigs  ! — and  yet  so  generous,  so 
struggling,  such  a  hard  fight  for  it.  So  gifted, — many  of  them  ! 
What  are  you  here  for  ? ' 

And  he  turned  round  suddenly  upon  his  companion.  David, 
touched  and  captured  he  knew  not  how  by  the  largeness  and 
spell  of  the  man's  presence,  conquered  his  shyness  and  explained 
himself  as  intelligibly  as  he  could  : 

An  English  bookseller,  making  his  way  in  trade,  yet  drawn  to 
France  by  love  for  her  literature  and  her  past,  and  by  a  blood- 
tie  which  seemed  to  have  in  it  mystery  and  pain,  for  it  could 
hardly  be  spoken  of— the  curious  little  story  took  the  artist's 
fancy.  Regnault  did  his  best  to  draw  out  more  of  it,  helped  the 
young  fellow  with  his  French,  tried  to  get  at  his  impressions,  and 


306  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

clearly  enjoyed  the  experience  to  which  his  seeking  artist's  sense 
had  led  him. 

'  What  a  night ! '  he  said  at  last,  drawing  a  full  draught  of 
the  May  into  his  great  chest.  '  Stop  and  look  down  those  streets 
in  the  moonlight.  What  surfaces, — what  gradations, — what  a 
beauty  of  multiplied  lines,  though  it  is  only  a  piece  of  vulgar 
Haussmann  !  Indoors  I  can't  breathe — but  out  of  doors  and  at 
night  this  Paris  of  ours,— ah  !  she  is  still  beautiful— beautiful ! 
Now  one  has  shaken  the  dust  of  that  place  off,  one  can  feel  it. 
What  did  you  think  of  it  ? — tell  me.' 

He  stooped  and  looked  into  his  companion's  face.  David  was 
tall  and  lithe,  but  Regnault  was  at  least  half  a  head  taller  and 
broader  in  proportion. 

David  walked  along  for  a  minute  without  answering.  He  too, 
and  even  more  keenly  than  Kegnault,  was  conscious  of  escape 
and  relief.  A  force  which  had,  as  it  were,  taken  life  and  feeling 
by  the  throat  had  relaxed  its  grip.  He  disengaged  himself  with 
mingled  loathing  and  joy.  But  in  his  shyness  he  did  not  know 
how  to  express  himself,  fearing,  too,  to  wound  the  Frenchman. 
At  last  he  said  slowly  : 

'  I  never  saw  so  many  clever  people  together  in  my  life.' 

The  words  were  bald,  but  Regnault  perfectly  understood 
what  was  meant  by  them,  as  well  as  by  the  troubled  conscious- 
ness of  the  black  eyes  raised  to  his.  He  laughed — shortly  and 
bitterly. 

'  No,  we  don't  lack  brains,  we  French.  All  the  same  I  tell 
you,  in  the  whole  of  that  room  there  are  about  half-a-dozen  peo- 
ple,— oh,  not  so  many  ! — not  nearly  so  many  ! — who  will  ever 
make  a  mark,  even  for  their  own  generation,  who  will  ever  strike 
anything  out  of  nature  that  is  worth  having — wrestle  with  her  to 
any  purpose.  Why  ?  Because  they  have  every  sort  of  capacity — 
every  sort  of  cleverness — and  no  character  /' 

David  walked  beside  him  in  silence.  He  thought  suddenly  of 
Regnault's  own  picture — its  strange  cruelty  and  force,  its  crafts- 
man's brilliance.  And  the  recollection  puzzled  him. 

Regnault,  however,  had  spoken  with  passion,  and  as  though 
out  of  the  fulness  of  some  sore  and  lorg-familiar  pondering. 

'You  never  saw  anything  like  that  in  England,'  he  resumed 
qnickly. 

David  hesitated. 

'  No,  I  never  did.  But  I  am  a  provincial,  and  I  have  seen 
nothing  at  all.  Perhaps  in  London — ' 

'No,  you  would  see  nothing  like  it  in  London,'  said  Regnault 
decidedly.  '  Bah  !  it  is  not  that  you  are  more  virtuous  than  we 
are.  Who  believes  such  folly  ?  But  your  vice  is  grosser, 
stupider.  Lucky  for  you  !  You  don't  sacrifice  to  it  the  best 
young  brain  of  the  nation,  as  we  are  perpetually  doing.  Ah, 
mon  Dieuf  he  broke  out  in  a  kind  of  despair,  '  this  enigma  of 
art ! — of  the  artist !  One  flounders  and  blunders  along.  I  have 
been  floundering  and  blundering  with  the  rest, — playing  tricks — 


CHAP,  v  STORM  AND  STRESS  307 

following  this  man  and  that — till  suddenly — a  door  opens — and 
one  sees  the  real  world  through  for  the  first  time  ! ' 

He  stood  still  in  his  excitement,  a  smile  of  the  most  exquisite 
quality  and  sweetness  dawning  on  his  strong  young  face. 

'And  then,'  he  went  on,  beginning  to  walk  again,  and  talking 
much  more  to  the  night  than  to  his  companion,  '  one  learns  that 
the  secret  of  life  lies  in  feeling — in  the  heart,  not  in  the  head. 
And  no  more  limits  than  before  ! — all  is  still  open,  divinely  open. 
Range  the  whole  world — see  everything,  learn  everything — till  at 
the  end  of  years  and  years  you  may  perhaps  be  found  worthy  to 
be  called  an  artist  !  But  let  art  have  her  ends,  all  the  while, 
shining  beyond  the  means  she  is  toiling  through — her  ends  of 
beauty  or  of  power.  To  spend  herself  on  the  mere  photography 
of  the  vile  and  the  hideous  !  what  waste — what  sacrilege  ! ' 

They  had  reached  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  which  lay  bathed 
in  moonlight,  the  silver  fountains  plashing,  the  trees  in  the 
Champs-Elysees  throwing  their  sharp  yet  delicate  shadows  on  the 
intense  whiteness  of  the  ground,  the  buildings  far  away  rising 
softly  into  the  softest  purest  blue.  Regnault  stopped  and  looked 
round  him  with  enchantment.  As  for  David,  he  had  no  eyes 
save  for  his  companion.  His  face  was  full  of  a  quick  responsive 
emotion.  After  an  experience  which  had  besmirched  every  ideal 
and  bemocked  every  faith,  the  young  Frenchman's  talk  had 
carried  the  lad  once  more  into  the  full  tide  of  poetry  and  romance. 
'  The  secret  of  life  lies  in  feeling,  in  the  heart,  not  the  head  '- 
ah,  that  he  understood  !  He  tried  to  express  his  assent,  his 
homage  to  the  speaker  ;  but  neither  he  nor  the  artist  understood 
very  clearly  what  he  was  saying.  Presently  Eegnault  said  in 
another  tone  : 

'  And  they  are  such  good  fellows,  many  of  them.  Starving 
often — but  nothing  to  propitiate  the  bourgeois,  nothing  to  com- 
promise the  "dignity  of  art."  A  man  will  paint  to  please  him- 
self all  day,  paint,  on  a  crust,  something  that  won't  and  can't 
sell,  that  the  world  in  fact  would  be  mad  to  buy  ;  then  in  the 
evening  he  will  put  his  canvas  to  the  wall,  and  paint  sleeve-links 
or  china  to  live.  And  so  generous  to  each  other  :  they  will  give 
each  other  all  they  have — food,  clothes,  money,  knowledge.  That 
man  who  gave  that  abominable  thing  about  St.  Francis — I  know 
him,  he  has  a  little  apartment  near  the  Quai  St. -Michel,  and  an 
invalid  mother.  He  is  a  perfect  angel  to  her.  I  could  take  off 
my  hat  to  him  whenever  I  think  of  it.' 

His  voice  dropped  again.  Regnault  was  pacing  along  across 
the  Place,  his  arms  behind  him,  David  at  his  side.  When  he 
resumed,  it  was  once  more  in  a  tone  of  despondency. 

'  There  is  an  ideal ;  but  so  twisted,  so  corrupted !  What  is 
wanted  is  not  less  intelligence  but  more — more  knowledge,  more 
experience — something  beyond  this  fevering,  brutalising  Paris, 
which  is  all  these  men  know.  They  have  got  the  poison  of  the 
Boulevards  in  their  blood,  and  it  duils  their  eye  and  hand.  They 
want  scattering  to  the  wilderness  ;  they  want  the  wave  of  life  to 


308  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

come  and  lift  them  past  the  mud  they  are  dabbling  in,  with  its 
hideous  wrecks  and  debris,  out  and  away  to  the  great  sea,  to  the 
infinite  beyond  of  experience  and  feeling  !  you,  too,  feel  with 
me  ? — you,  too,  see  it  like  that  ?  Ah  !  when  one  has  seen  and 
felt  Italy — the  East, — the  South — lived  heart  to  heart  with  a  wild 
nature,  or  with  the  great  embodied  thought  of  the  past, — lived  at 
large,  among  great  things,  great  sights,  great  emotions,  then 
there  comes  purification  !  There  is  no  other  way  out — no,  none  ! ' 

So  for  another  hour  Regnault  led  the  English  boy  up  and 
down  and  along  the  quays,  talking  in  the  frankest  openest  way 
to  this  acquaintance  of  a  night.  It  was  as  though  he  were 
wrestling  his  own  way  through  his  own  life-problem.  Very  often 
David  could  hardly  follow.  The  joys,  the  passions,  the  tempta- 
tions of  the  artist,  struggling  with  the  life  of  thought  and  aspira- 
tion, the  craving  to  know  everything,  to  feel  everything,  at  war 
with  the  hunger  for  a  moral  unity  and  a  stainless  self-respect — 
there  was  all  this  in  his  troubled,  discursive  talk,  and  there  was 
besides  the  magic  touch  of  genius,  youth,  and  poetry. 

'  Well,  this  is  strange  ! '  he  said  at  last,  stopping  at  a  point 
between  the  Louvre  on  the  one  hand  and  the  Institute  on  the 
other,  the  moonlit  river  lying  between. — '  My  friends  come  to  me 
at  Rome  or  at  Tangiers,  and  they  complain  of  me,  "Regnault, 
you  have  grown  morose,  no  one  can  get  a  word  out  of  you  " — and 
they  go  away  wounded — I  have  seen  it  often.  And  it  was  always 
true.  For  months  I  have  had  no  words.  I  have  been  in  the 
dark,  wrestling  with  my  art  and  with  this  goading,  torturing 
world,  which  the  artist  with  his  puny  forces  has  somehow  to  tame 
and  render.  Then — the  other  day — ah  !  well,  no  matter  ! — but 
the  dark  broke,  and  there  was  light !  and  when  I  saw  your  face, 
your  stranger's  face,  in  that  crowd  to-night,  listening  to  those 
things,  it  drew  me.  I  wanted  to  say  my  say.  I  don't  make 
excuses.  Very  likely  we  shall  never  meet  again — but  for  this 
hour  we  have  been  friends.  Good  night  ! — good  night !  Look, 
— the  dawn  is  coming  ! ' 

And  he  pointed  to  where,  behind  the  towers  of  Notre-Dame,  the 
first  whiteness  of  the  coming  day  was  rising  into  the  starry  blue. 

They  shook  hands. 

'  You  go  back  to  England  soon  ? ' 

'  In  a — a — week  or  two.' 

'  Only  believe  this — we  have  things  better  worth  seeing  than 
"  Les  Trois  Rats  " — things  that  represent  us  better.  That  is  what 
the  foreigner  is  always  doing  ;  he  spends  his  time  in  wondering 
at  our  monkey  tricks  ;  there  is  no  nation  can  do  them  so  well  as 
we  ;  and  the  great  France — the  undying  France  ! — disappears  in 
a  splutter  of  blague  /' 

He  leant  over  the  parapet,  forgetting  his  companion,  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  great  cathedral,  on  the  slender  shaft  of  the  Sainte 
Chapelle,  on  the  sky  filling  with  light. 

Then  suddenly  he  turned  round,  laid  a  quick  hand  on  his 
companion's  shoulder- 


CHAP,  vr  STORM  AND   STRESS  309 

'  If  you  ever  feel  inclined  to  write  to  me,  the  Ecole  des  Beaux- 
Arts  will  find  me.  Adieu.' 

And  drawing  his  coat  round  him  in  the  chilliness  of  the  dawn, 
he  walked  off  quickly  across  the  bridge. 

David  also  hurried  away,  speeding  along  the  deserted  pave- 
ments till  again  he  was  in  his  own  dark  street.  The  dawn  was 
growing  from  its  first  moment  of  mysterious  beauty  into  a  grey 
disillusioning  light.  But  he  felt  no  reaction.  He  crept  up  the 
squalid  stairs  to  his  room.  It  was  heavy  with  the  scent  of  the 
narcissus. 

He  took  them,  and  stole  along  the  passage  to  Elise's  door. 
There  were  three  steps  outside  it.  He  sat  down  on  the  lowest, 
putting  his  flowers  beside  him.  There  was  something  awful  to 
him  even  in  thu  nearness  ;  he  dare  not  have  gone  higher. 

He  sat  there  for  long — his  heart  beating,  beating.  Every 
part  of  his  French  experience  so  far,  whether  by  sympathy  or 
recoil,  had  helped  to  bring  him  to  this  intoxication  of  sense  and 
soul.  Reguault  had  spoken  of  the  '  great  things '  of  life.  Had 
he  too  come  to  understand  them — thus? 

At  last  he  left  his  flowers  there,  kissing  the  step  on  which 
they  were  laid,  and  which  her  foot  must  touch.  He  could  hardly 
sleep  ;  the  slight  fragrance  which  clung  to  the  old  bearskin  in 
which  he  wrapt  himself  helped  to  keep  him  restless ;  it  was  the 
faint  heliotrope  scent  he  had  noticed  in  her  room. 


CHAPTER  VI 

'  HE  loves  me— he  does  really  !    Poor  boy  ! ' 

The  speaker  was  Elise  Delaunay.  She  was  sitting  alone  on 
the  divan  in  her  atelier,  trying  on  a  pair  of  old  Pompadour  shoes, 
with  large  faded  rosettes  and  pink  heels,  which  she  had  that 
moment  routed  out  of  a  broker's  shop  in  the  Rue  de  Seine,  on  her 
way  back  from  the  Luxembourg  with  David.  They  made  her 
feet  look  enchautingly  small,  and  she  was  holding  back  her  skirts 
that  she  might  get  a  good  look  at  them. 

Her  conviction  of  David's  passion  did  not  for  some  time  lessen 
her  interest  in  the  shoes,  but  at  last  she  kicked  them  off,  and  flung 
herself  back  on  the  divan,  to  think  out  the  situation  a  little. 

Yes,  the  English  youth's  adoration  could  no  longer  be  ignored. 
It  had  become  evident,  even  to  her  own  acquaintances  and  com- 
rades in  the  various  galleries  she  was  now  haunting  in  this  bye- 
time  of  the  artistic  year.  Whenever  she  and  he  appeared 
together  now,  there  were  sly  looks  and  smiles. 

The  scandal  of  it  did  not  affect  her  in  the  least.  She  belonged 
to  Bohemia,  so  apparently  did  he.  She  had  been  perfectly  honest 
till  now  ;  but  she  had  never  let  any  convention  stand  in  her  way. 
All  her  conceptions  of  the  relations  between  men  and  women  were 
of  an  extremely  free  kind.  Her  mother's  blood  m  her  accounted 
both  for  a  certain  coldness  and  a  certain  personal  refinement  which 


310  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  in 

both  divided  and  protected  her  from  a  great  many  of  her  acquaint- 
ance, but  through  her  father  she  had  been  acquainted  for  years 
with  the  type  of  life  and  menage  which  prevails  among  a  certain 
section  of  the  French  artist  class,  and  if  the  occasion  were  but 
strong  enough  she  had  no  instincts  inherited  or  acquired  which 
would  stand  in  the  way  of  the  gratification  of  passion. 

On  the  contrary,  her  reasoned  opinions  so  far  as  she  had  any 
were  all  in  favour  of  V  union  libre — that  curious  type  of  associa- 
tion which  held  the  artist  Theodore  Rousseau  for  life  to  the  woman 
who  passed  as  his  wife,  and  which  obtains  to  a  remarkable  extent, 
with  all  those  accompaniments  of  permanence,  fidelity,  and 
mutual  service,  which  are  commonly  held  to  belong  only  to 
Vunion  legate,  in  one  or  two  strata  of  French  society.  She  was 
capable  of  sentiment ;  she  had  hidden  veins  of  womanish  weak- 
ness ;  but  at  the  same  time  the  little  creature's  prevailing  temper 
was  one  of  remarkable  coolness  and  audacity.  She  judged  for 
herself ;  she  had  read  for  herself,  observed  for  herself.  Such  a 
temper  had  hitherto  preserved  her  from  adventures ;  but,  upon 
occasion,  it  might  as  easily  land  her  in  one.  She  was  at  once  a 
daughter  of  art  and  a  daughter  of  the  people,  with  a  cross  strain 
of  gentle  breeding  and  intellectual  versatility  thrown  in,  which 
made  her  more  interesting  and  more  individual  than  the  rest  of 
her  class. 

'  We  are  a  pair  of  Romantics  out  of  date,  you  and  I,'  she  had 
said  once  to  David,  half  mocking,  half  in  earnest,  and  the  phrase 
fitted  the  relation  and  position  of  the  pair  very  nearly.  In  spite 
of  the  enormous  difference  of  their  habits  and  training  they  had 
at  bottom  similar  tastes — the  same  capacity  for  the  excitements 
of  art  and  imagination,  the  same  shrinking  from  the  coarse  and 
ugly  sides  of  the  life  amid  which  they  moved,  the  same  cravings 
for  novelty  and  experience. 

David  went  no  more  to  the  '  Trois  Rats,'  and  when,  in  obedi- 
ence to  Lenain's  recommendation,  he  had  bought  and  begun  to 
read  a  novel  of  the  Goncourts,  he  threw  it  from  him  in  a  disgust 
beyond  expression.  Her  talk,  meanwhile,  was  in  some  respects 
of  the  freest ;  she  would  discuss  subjects  impossible  to  the  English 
girl  of  the  same  class  ;  she  asked  very  few  questions  as  to  the 
people  she  mixed  with  ;  and  he  was,  by  now,  perfectly  acquainted 
with  her  view,  that  on  the  whole  marriage  was  for  the  bourgeois, 
and  had  few  attractions  for  people  who  were  capable  of  penetrat- 
ing deeper  into  the  rich  growths  of  life.  But  there  was  no  per- 
sonal taint  or  license  in  what  she  said  ;  and  she  herself  could  be 
always  happily  divided  from  her  topics.  Their  Bohemia  was 
canopied  with  illusions,  but  the  illusions  on  the  whole  were  those 
of  poetry. 

Were  all  David's  illusions  hers,  however  ?  Love  !  She  thought 
of  it,  half  laughing,  as  she  lay  on  the  divan.  She  knew  nothing 
about  it — she  was  for  art.  Yet  what  a  brow,  what  eyes,  what  a 
gait — like  a  young  Achilles  ! 

She  sprang  up  to  look  at  a  sketch  of  him,  dashed  off  the  day 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND  STRESS  311 

before,  which  was  on  the  easel.  Yes,  it  was  like.  There  was 
the  quick  ardent  air,  the  southern  colour,  the  clustering  black 
hair,  the  young  parting  of  the  lips.  The  invitation  of  the 
eyes  was  irresistible — she  smiled  into  them — the  little  pale  face 
flushing. 

But  at  the  same  moment  her  attention  was  caught  by  a  sketch 
pinned  against  the  wall  just  behind  the  easel. 

'  Ah  !  my  cousin,  my  good  cousin  ! '  she  said,  with  a  little 
mocking  twist  of  the  mouth  ;  '  how  strange  that  you  have  not 
been  here  all  this  time — never  once  !  There  was  something  said, 
I  remember,  about  a  visit  to  Bordeaux  about  now.  Ah  !  well — 
tant  mieux — for  you  would  be  rather  jealous,  my  cousin  ! ' 

Then  she  sat  down  with  her  hands  on  her  knees,  very  serious. 
How  long  since  they  met  ?  A  week.  How  long  till  the  temporary 
closing  of  the  Salon  and  the  voting  of  the  rewards  ?  A  fortnight. 
Well,  should  it  go  on  till  then  ?  Yes  or  no  ?  As  soon  as  she 
knew  her  fate — or  at  any  rate  if  she  got  her  mention — she  would 
go  back  to  work.  She  had  two  subjects  in  her  mind  ;  she  would 
work  at  home,  and  Taranne  had  promised  to  come  and  advise  her. 
Then  she  would  have  no  time  for  handsome  English  boys.  But 
till  then  ? 

She  took  an  anemone  from  a  bunch  David  had  brought  her, 
and  began  to  pluck  off  the  petals,  alternating  'yes'  and  'no.' 
The  last  petal  fell  to  '  yes. ' 

'  I  should  have  done  just  the  same  if  it  had  been  "  no,"  '  she 
said,  laughing.  '  Allans,  he  amuses  me,  and  I  do  him  no  harm. 
When  I  go  back  to  work  he  can  do  his  business.  He  has  done 
none  yet.  He  will  forget  me  and  make  some  money.' 

She  paced  up  and  down  the  studio  thinking  again.  She  was 
conscious  of  some  remorse  for  her  part  in  sending  the  English- 
man's sister  to  the  Ccrvins.  The  matter  had  never  been  mentioned 
again  between  her  and  David  ;  yet  she  knew  instinctively  that  he 
was  often  ill  at  ease.  The  girl  was  perpetually  in  Montjoie's 
studio,  and  surrounded  in  public  places  by  a  crew  of  his  friends. 
Madame  Cervin  was  constantly  in  attendance  no  doubt,  but  if  it 
came  to  a  struggle  she  would  have  no  power  with  the  English 
girl,  whose  obstinacy  was  in  proportion  to  her  ignorance. 

Elise  had  herself  once  stopped  Madame  Cervin  on  the  stairs, 
and  said  some  frank  things  of  the  sculptor,  in  order  to  quiet  an 
uncomfortable  conscience. 

'  Ah  !  you  do  not  like  Monsieur  Montjoie  ? '  said  the  other, 
looking  hard  at  her. 

Elise  coloured,  then  she  recovered  herself. 

'  All  the  world  knows  that  Monsieur  Montjoie  has  no  scruples, 
madame,'  she  cried  angrily.  '  You  know  it  yourself.  It  is  a 
shame.  That  girl  understands  nothing.' 

Madame  Cervin  laughed. 

'  Certainly  she  understands  everything  that  she  pleases, 
mademoiselle.  But  if  there  is  any  anxiety,  let  her  brother  come 
and  look  after  her.  He  can  take  her  where  she  wants  to  go.  I 


312  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  in 

should  be  glad  indeed.  I  am  as  tired  as  a  dog.  Since  she  came 
it  is  one  tapage  from  morning  till  night.' 

And  Elise  retired,  discomfited  before  those  small  malicious 
eyes.  Since  David's  adoration  for  the  girl  artist  in  No.  27  had 
become  more  or  less  public  property,  Madame  Cervin,  who  had 
seen  from  the  beginning  that  Louie  was  a  burden  on  her  brother, 
had  decidedly  the  best  of  the  situation. 

'  Has  she  lent  Montjoie  money  ? ' 

Elise  meditated.  The  little  bourgeoise  had  a  curious  weakness 
for  posing  as  the  patron  of  the  various  artists  in  the  house.  '  Very 
possible  !  and  she  looks  on  the  Maenad  as  the  only  way  of  getting 
it  back  ?  She  would  sell  her  soul  for  a  napoleon — I  always  knew 
that.  Canaille,  all  of  them  ! ' 

And  the  meditation  ended  in  the  impatient  conclusion  that 
neither  she  nor  the  brother  had  any  responsibility.  After  all, 
any  decent  girl,  French  or  English,  could  soon  see  for  herself  what 
manner  of  man  was  Jules  Montjoie  !  And  now  for  the  '  private 
view '  of  a  certain  artistic  club  to  which  she  had  promised  to  take 
her  English  acquaintance.  All  the  members  of  the  club  were 
younf,  —of  the  new  rebellious  school  of  ' plein  air"1 — the  afternoon 
promised  to  be  amusing. 

So  the  companionship  of  these  two  went  on,  and  David  passed 
from  one  golden  day  to  another.  How  she  lectured  him,  the  little, 
vain,  imperious  thing  ;  and  how  meek  he  was  with  her,  how 
different  from  his  Manchester  self !  The  woman's  cleverness 
filled  the  field.  The  man,  wholly  preoccupied  with  other  things, 
did  not  care  to  produce  himself,  and  in  the  first  ardour  of  his  new 
devotion  kept  all  the  self-assertive  elements  of  his  own  nature  in 
the  background,  caring  for  nothing  but  to  watch  her  eyes  as  she 
talked,  to  have  her  voice  in  his  ears,  to  keep  her  happy  and 
content  in  his  company. 

Yet  she  was  not  taken  in.  With  other  people  he  must  be 
proud,  argumentative,  self-willed — that  she  was  sure  of  ;  but  her 
conviction  only  made  her  realise  her  power  over  him  with  the 
more  pleasure.  His  naive  respect  for  her  own  fragmentary 
knowledge,  his  unbounded  admiration  for  her  talent,  his  quick 
sympathy  for  all  she  did  and  was,  these  things,  little  by  little, 
tended  to  excite,  to  preoccupy  her. 

Especially  was  she  bent  upon  his  artistic  education.  She 
carried  him  hither  and  thither,  to  the  Louvre,  the  Luxembourg, 
the  Salon,  insisting  with  a  feverish  eloquence  and  invention  that 
he  should  worship  all  that  she  worshipped — no  matter  if  he  did  not 
understand  !— let  him  worship  all  the  same — till  he  had  learnt  his 
new  alphabet  with  a  smiling  docility,  and  caught  her  very  tricks 
of  phrase.  Especially  were  they  haunters  of  the  sculptures  in 
the  Louvre,  where,  because  of  the  difficulty  of  it,  she  piqued 
herself  most  especially  on  knowledge,  and  could  convict  him 
most  triumphantly  of  a  barbarian  ignorance.  Up  and  down 
they  wandered,  and  she  gave  him  eyes,  whether  for  Artemis, 
or  Aphrodite,  or  Apollo,  or  still  more  for  the  sigiuficant  and 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND   STRESS  315 

troubling  art  of  the  Renaissance,  French  and  Italian.  She  would 
flit  before  him,  perching  here  and  there  like  a  bird,  and  quivering 
through  and  through  with  a  voluble  enjoyment. 

Then  from  these  lingerings  amid  a  world  charged  at  every 
point  with  the  elements  of  passion  and  feeling,  they  would  turn 
into  the  open  air,  into  the  May  sunshine,  which  seemed  to  David's 
northern  eyes  so  lavish  and  inexhaustible,  carrying  with  it  inevi- 
tably the  kindness  of  the  gods !  They  would  sit  out  of  doors 
either  in  the  greenwood  paths  of  the  Bois,  where  he  could  lie  at 
her  feet,  and  see  nothing  but  her  face  and  the  thick  young  wood 
all  round  them,  or  in  some  corner  of  the  Champs-Elysees,  or  the 
sun-beaten  Quai  de  la  Conference,  where  the  hurrying  life  of  the 
town  brushed  past  them  incessantly,  yet  without  disturbing  for  a 
moment  their  absorption  in  or  entertainment  of  each  other. 

Yet  all  through  she  maintained  her  mastery  of  the  situation. 
She  was  a  riddle  to  him  often,  poor  boy  !  One  moment  she  would 
lend  herself  in  bewildering  unexpected  ways  to  his  passion,  the 
next  she  would  allow  him  hardly  the  privileges  of  the  barest 
acquaintance,  hardly  the  carrying  of  her  cloak,  the  touch  of  her 
hand.  But  she  had  no  qualms.  It  was  but  to  last  another  fort- 
night ;  the  friendship  soothed  and  beguiled  for  her  these  days  of 
excited  waiting ;  and  a  woman,  when  she  is  an  artist  and  a  Roman- 
tic, may  at  least  sit,  smoke,  and  chat  with  whomsoever  she  likes, 
provided  it  be  a  time  of  holiday,  and  she  is  not  betraying  her  art. 

Meanwhile  the  real  vulgarity  of  her  nature — its  insatiable 
vanity,  its  reckless  ambition — was  masked  from  David  mainly  by 
the  very  jealousy  and  terror  which  her  artist's  life  soon  produced 
in  him.  He  saw  no  sign  of  other  lovers  ;  she  had  many  acquaint- 
ances but  no  intimates  ;  and  the  sketch  in  her  room  had  been 
carelessly  explained  to  him  as  the  portrait  of  her  cousin.  But 
the  atelier,  and  the  rivalries  it  represented  : — after  three  days 
with  her  he  had  learnt  that  what  had  seemed  to  him  the  extrava- 
gance, the  pose  of  her  first  talk  with  him,  was  in  truth  the 
earnest,  the  reality  of  her  existence.  She  told  him  that  since  she 
was  a  tiny  child  she  had  dreamed  of  fame — dreamed  of  people 
turning  in  the  streets  when  she  passed — of  a  glory  that  should 
lift  her  above  all  the  commonplaces  of  existence,  and  all  the  dis- 
advantages of  her  own  start  in  life. 

'  I  am  neither  beautiful,  nor  rich,  nor  well-born  ;  but  if  I  have 
talent,  what  matter  ?  Everyone  will  be  at  my  feet.  And  if  I 
have  no  talent — -grand  Dieu  ! — what  is  there  left  for  me  but  to 
kill  myself  ? ' 

And  she  would  clasp  her  hands  round  her  knees,  and  look  at 
him  with  fierce,  drawn  brows,  as  though  defying  him  to  say  a 
single  syllable  in  favour  of  any  meaner  compromise  with  fate. 

This  fever  of  the  artist  and  the  concurrent — in  a  woman 
above  all — how  it  bewildered  him  !  He  soon  understood  enough 
of  it,  however,  to  be  desperately  jealous  of  it,  to  realise  some- 
thing of  the  preliminary  bar  it  placed  between  any  lover  and  the 
girl's  heart  and  life. 


314  THE   HISTOUV   OF  DAVID  URIEVE          BOOK  ni 

Above  all  was  he  jealous  of  her  teachers.  Taranne  clearly 
could  beat  her  down  with  a  word,  reduce  her  to  tears  with  an 
unfavourable  criticism  ;  then  he  had  but  to  hold  up  a  finger, 
to  say,  '  Mademoiselle,  you  have  worked  well  this  week,  your 
drawing  shows  improvement,  I  have  hopes  of  you,'  to  bring  her 
to  his  feet  with  delight  and  gratitude.  It  was  a  monstrous 
power,  this  power  of  the  master  with  his  pupil  !  How  could 
women  submit  to  it  ? 

Yet  his  lover's  instincts  led  him  safely  through  many  perils. 
He  was  infinitely  complaisant  towards  all  her  artistic  talk,  all  her 
gossip  of  the  atelier.  It  seemed  to  him — btat  then  his  apprehen- 
sion of  this  strange  new  world  was  naturally  a  somewhat  confused 
one — that  Elise  was  not  normally  on  terms  with  any  of  her  fellow  - 
students. 

'  If  I  don't  get  my  mention,'  she  would  say  passionately,  '  I 
tell  you  again  it  will  be  intrigue  :  it  will  be  those  creatures  in  the 
atelier  who  want  to  get  rid  of  me— to  finish  with  me.  Ah  !  I  will 
crush  them  all  yet.  And  I  have  been  good  to  them  all — every 
one — I  vow  I  have — even  to  that  animal  of  a  Breal,  who  is  always 
robbing  me  of  my  place  at  the  concours,  and  taking  mean  advan- 
tages. Miserables .' ' 

And  the  tears  would  stand  in  her  angry  eyes  ;  her  whole 
delicate  frame  would  throb  with  fierce  feeling. 

Gradually  he  learnt  how  to  deal  with  these  fits,  even  when 
they  chilled  him  with  a  dread,  a  conviction  he  dared  not  analyse. 
He  would  so  soothe  and  listen  to  her,  so  ply  her  with  the  praises  of 
her  gift,  which  came  floated  to  him  on  the  talk  of  those  acquaint- 
ances of  hers  to  whom  she  had  introduced  him,  that  her  most 
deep-rooted  irritations  would  give  way  for  a  time.  The  woman 
would  reappear  ;  she  would  yield  to  the  charm  of  his  admiring 
eyes,  his  stammered  flatteries  ;  her  whole  mood  would  break  up, 
dissolve  into  eager  softness,  and  she  would  fall  into  a  childish 
plaintiveness,  saying  wild  generous  things  even  of  her  rivals, 
now  there  seemed  to  be  no  one  under  heaven  to  take  their  part, 
and  at  last,  even,  letting  her  little  hand  fall  into  those  eager 
brown  ones  which  lay  in  wait  for  it,  letting  it  linger  there — for- 
gotten. 

Especially  was  she  touched  in  his  favour  by  the  way  in  which 
Eegnault  had  singled  him  out.  After  he  had  given  her  the  his- 
tory of  that  midnight  walk,  he  saw  clearly  that  he  had  risen  to  a 
higher  plane  in  her  esteem.  She  had  no  heroes  exactly  ;  but  she 
had  certain  artistic  passions,  certain  romantic  fancies,  which 
seemed  to  touch  deep  fibres  in  her.  Her  admiration  for  Eegnault 
was  one  of  these  ;  but  David  soon  understood  that  he  had  no 
cause  whatever  to  be  jealous  of  it.  It  was  a  matter  purely  of  the 
mind  and  the  imagination. 

So  the  days  passed — the  hot  lengthening  days.  Sometimes  in 
the  long  afternoons  they  pushed  far  afield  into  the  neighbourhood 
of  Paris.  The  green  wooded  hills  of  Sevres  and  St.  Cloud,  the 
blue  curves  and  reaches  of  the  Seine,  the  flashing  lights  and 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND   STRESS  315 

figures,  the  pleasures  of  companionship,  self -revelation,  independ- 
ence— the  day  was  soon  lost  in  these  quick  impressions,  and  at 
night  they  would  come  back  in  a  fragrant  moonlight,  descending 
from  their  train  into  the  noise  and  glitter  of  the  streets,  only  to 
draw  closer  together — for  surely  on  these  crowded  pavements 
David  might  claim  her  little  arm  in  his  for  safety's  sake — till  at 
last  they  stood  in  the  dark  passage  between  his  door  and  hers,  and 
she  would  suddenly  pelt  him  with  a  flower,  spring  up  her  small 
stairway,  and  lock  her  door  behind  her,  before,  in  his  emotion, 
he  could  find  his  voice  or  a  farewell.  Then  he  would  make  his 
way  into  his  own  den,  and  sit  there  in  the  dark,  lost  in  a  throng- 
ing host  of  thoughts  and  memories, — feeling  life  one  vibrating 
delight. 

At  last  one  morning  he  awoke  to  the  fact  that  only  four 
days  more  remained  before  the  date  on  which,  according  to 
their  original  plan,  they  were  to  go  back  to  Manchester.  He 
laughed  aloud  when  the  recollection  first  crossed  his  mind  ;  then, 
having  a  moment  to  himself,  he  sat  down  and  scrawled  a  few 
hasty  words  to  John.  Business  detained  him  yet  a  while — would 
detain  him  a  few  weeks — let  John  manage  as  he  pleased,  his  em- 
ployer trusted  everything  to  him — and  money  was  enclosed. 
Then  he  wrote  another  hurried  note  to  the  bank  where  he  had 
placed  his  six  hundred  pounds.  Let  them  send  him  twenty 
pounds  at  once,  in  Bank  of  England  notes.  He  felt  himself  a 
young  king  as  he  gave  the  order — king  of  this  mean  world  and  of 
its  dross.  All  his  business  projects  had  vanished  from  his  mind. 
He  could  barely  have  recalled  them  if  he  had  tried.  During  the 
first  days  of  his  acquaintance  with  Elise  he  had  spent  a  few  spare 
hours  in  turning  over  the  boxes  on  the  quays,  in  talks  with  book- 
sellers in  the  Rue  de  Seine  or  the  Rue  de  Lille,  in  preliminary 
inquiries  respecting  some  commissions  he  had  undertaken.  But 
now,  every  hour,  every  thought  were  hers.  What  did  money 
matter,  in  the  name  of  Heaven  ?  Yet  when  his  twenty  pounds 
came,  he  changed  his  notes  and  pocketed  his  napoleons  with  a 
vast  satisfaction.  For  they  meant  power,  they  meant  opportun- 
ity ;  every  one  should  be  paid  away  against  so  many  hours  by  her 
side,  at  her  feet. 

Meanwhile  day  after  day  he  had  reminded  himself  of  Louie, 
and  day  after  day  he  had  forgotten  her  again,  absolutely,  alto- 
gether. Once  or  twice  he  met  her  on  the  stairs,  started,  remem- 
bered, and  tried  to  question  her  as  to  what  she  was  doing.  But 
she  was  still  angry  with  him  for  his  interference  on  the  day  of 
the  pose  ;  and  he  could  get  very  little  out  of  her.  Let  him  only 
leave  her  alone  ;  she  was  not  a  school-child  to  be  meddled  with  ; 
that  he  would  find  out,  As  to  Madame  Cervin,  she  was  a  little 
fool,  and  her  meanness  in  money  matters  was  disgraceful ;  but 
she,  Louie,  could  put  up  with  her.  One  of  these  meetings  took 
place  on  the  day  of  his  letters  to  the  bank  and  to  John.  Louie 
asked  him  abruptly  when  he  thought  of  returning.  He  flushed 


316  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

deeply,  stammered,  said  he  was  inclined  to  stay  longer,  but  of 
course  she  could  be  sent  home.  An  escort  could  be  found  for 
her.  She  stared  at  him  ;  then  suddenly  her  black  eyes  sparkled, 
and  she  laughed  so  that  the  sound  echoed  up  the  dark  stairs. 
David  hotly  inquired  what  she  meant ;  but  she  ran  up  still  laugh- 
ing loudly,  and  he  was  left  to  digest  her  scornful  amusement  as 
best  he  could. 

Not  long  after  he  found  the  Cervins'  door  open  as  he  passed, 
and  in  the  passage  saw  a  group  of  people,  mostly  men  ;  Montjoie 
in  front,  just  lighting  a  cigar  ;  Louie's  black  hat  in  the  back- 
ground. David  hurried  past ;  he  loathed  the  sculptor's  battered 
look,  his  insolent  eye,  his  slow  ambiguous  manner ;  he  still  burnt 
with  the  anger  and  humiliation  of  his  ineffectual  descent  on  the 
man's  domain.  But  Madame  Cervin,  catching  sight  of  him  from 
the  back  of  the  party,  pursued  him  panting  and  breathless  to  his 
own  door.  Would  monsieur  please  attend  to  her  ;  he  was  so  hard 
to  get  hold  of ;  never,  in  fact,  at  home  !  Would  he  settle  her 
little  bill,  and  give  her  more  money  for  current  expenses  ?  Ma- 
demoiselle Louie  required  to  be  kept  amused — mon  Dieu  ! — from 
morning  to  night  !  She  had  no  objection,  provided  it  were  made 
worth  her  while.  And  how  much  longer  did  monsieur  think  of 
remaining  in  Paris  T 

David  answered  recklessly  that  he  did  not  know,  paid  her  bill 
for  Louie's  board  and  extras  without  looking  at  it,  and  gave  her 
a  napoleon  in  hand,  wherewith  she  departed,  her  covetous  eyes 
aglow,  her  mouth  full  of  excited  civilities. 

She  even  hesitated  a  moment  at  the  door  and  then  came  back 
to  assure  him  that  she  was  really  all  discretion  with  regard  to  his 
sister  ;  no  doubt  monsieur  had  heard  some  unpleasant  stories,  for 
instance,  of  M.  Montjoie  ;  she  could  understand  perfectly,  that 
coming  from  such  a  quarter,  they  had  affected  monsieur's  mind  ; 
but  he  would  see  that  she  could  not  make  a  sudden  quarrel  with 
one  of  her  husband's  old  friends  ;  Mademoiselle  Louie  (who  was 
already  her  cherie)  had  taken  a  fancy  to  pose  for  this  statue  ;  it 
was  surely  better  to  indulge  her  than  to  rouse  her  self- w ill,  but 
she  could  assure  monsieur  that  she  had  looked  after  her  as 
though  it  had  been  her  own  daughter. 

David  stood  impatiently  listening.  In  a  few  minutes  he  was 
to  be  with  Elise  at  the  corner  of  the  Rue  Lafltte.  Of  course  it 
was  all  right ! — and  if  it  were  not,  he  could  not  mend  it.  The 
woman  was  vulgar  and  grasping,  but  what  reason  was  there  to 
think  anything  else  that  was  evil  of  her  ?  Probably  she  had  put 
up  with  Louie  more  easily  than  a  woman  of  a  higher  type  would 
have  done.  At  any  rate  she  was  doing  her  best,  and  what  more 
could  be  asked  of  him  than  he  had  done  ?  Louie  behaved  out- 
rageously in  Manchester  ;  he  could  not  help  it,  either  there  or 
here.  He  had  interfered  again  and  again,  and  had  always  been 
a  fool  for  his  pains.  Let  her  choose  for  herself.  A  number  of 
old  and  long-hidden  exasperations  seemed  now  to  emerge  when- 
ever he  thought  of  his  sister. 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND  STRESS  317 

Five  minutes  later  he  was  in  the  Rue  Lafitte. 

It  was  Elise's  caprice  that  they  should  always  meet  in  this 
way,  out  of  doors ;  at  the  corner  of  their  own  street ;  on  the 
steps  of  the  Madeleine  ;  beneath  the  Vendome  Column  ;  in  front 
of  a  particular  bonbon  shop  ;  or  beside  the  third  tree  from  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde  in  the  northern  alley  of  the  Tuileries 
Gardens.  He  had  been  only  once  inside  her  studio  since  the  first 
evening  of  their  acquaintance. 

His  mind  was  full  of  excitement,  for  the  Salon  had  been 
closed  since  the  day  before  ;  and  the  awards  of  the  jury  would  be 
informally  known,  at  least  in  some  cases,  by  the  evening.  Elise's 
excitement  since  the  critical  hours  began  had  been  pitiful  to  see. 
As  he  stood  waiting  he  gave  his  whole  heart  to  her  and  her 
ambitions,  flinging  away  from  him  with  a  passionate  impatience 
every  other  interest,  every  other  thought. 

When  she  came  she  looked  tired  and  white.  '  I  can't  go  to 
galleries,  and  I  can't  paint,'  she  said,  shortly.  'What  shall  we 
do?' 

Her  little  black  hat  was  drawn  forward,  but  through  the 
dainty  veil  he  could  see  the  red  spot  on  either  cheek.  Her  hands 
were  pushed  deep  into  the  pockets  of  her  light  grey  jacket, 
recalling  the  energetic  attitude  in  which  she  had  stood  over  Louie 
on  the  occasion  of  their  first  meeting.  He  guessed  at  once  that 
she  had  not  slept,  and  that  she  was  beside  herself  with  anxiety. 
How  to  manage  her  ? — how  to  console  her  ?  He  felt  himself  so 
young  and  raw  ;  yet  already  his  passion  had  awakened  in  him  a 
hundred  new  and  delicate  perceptions. 

'  Look  at  the  weather  ! '  he  said  to  her.  '  Come  out  of  town  ! 
let  us  make  for  the  Gare  St.  Lazare,  and  spend  the  day  at  St. 
Germain.' 

She  hesitated. 

'  Taranne  will  write  to  me  directly  he  knows — directly  !  He 
might  write  any  time  this  evening.  No,  no ! — I  can't  go  !  I 
must  be  on  the  spot.' 

'  He  can't  write  before  the  evening.  You  said  yourself  before 
seven  nothing  could  be  known.  We  will  get  back  in  ample  time, 
I  swear.' 

They  were  standing  in  the  shade  of  a  shop  awning,  and  he 
was  looking  down  at  her,  eagerly,  persuasively.  She  had  a  debate 
with  herself,  then  with  a  despairing  gesture  of  the  hands,  she 
turned  abruptly — 

'  Well  then — to  the  station  ! ' 

When  they  had  started,  she  lay  back  in  the  empty  carriage  he 
had  found  for  her,  and  shut  her  eyes.  The  air  was  oppressive, 
for  the  day  before  had  been  showery,  and  the  heat  this  morning 
was  a  damp  heat  which  relaxed  the  whole  being.  But  before  the 
train  moved,  she  felt  a  current  of  coolness,  and  hastily  looking  up 
she  saw  that  David  had  possessed  himself  of  the  cheap  fan  which 
had  been  lying  on  her  lap,  and  was  fanning  her  with  his  gaze  fixed 
upon  her,  a  gaze  which  haunted  her  as  her  eyelids  fell  again. 


318  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

Suddenly  she  fell  into  an  inward  perplexity,  an  inward  impa- 
tience on  the  subject  of  her  companion,  and  her  relation  to  him. 
It  had  been  all  very  well  till  yesterday  !  But  now  the  artistic  and 
professional  situation  had  become  so  strained,  so  intense,  she 
could  hardly  give  him  a  thought.  His  presence  there,  and  its 
tacit  demands  upon  her,  tried  her  nerves.  Her  mind  was  full  of 
a  hundred  miseres  d' atelier,  of  imaginary  enemies  and  intrigues  ; 
one  minute  she  was  all  hope,  the  next  all  fear  ;  and  she  turned 
sick  when  she  thought  of  Taranne's  letter. 

What  had  she  been  entangling  herself  for  ?  she  whose  whole 
life  and  soul  belonged  to  art  and  ambition  !  This  comradeship, 
begun  as  a  caprice,  an  adventure,  was  becoming  too  serious.  It 
must  end  ! — end  probably  to-day,  as  she  had  all  along  deter- 
mined. Then,  as  she  framed  the  thought,  she  became  conscious 
of  a  shrinking,  a  difficulty,  which  enraged  and  frightened  her. 

She  sat  up  abruptly  and  threw  back  her  veil. 

David  made  a  little  exclamation  as  he  dropped  the  fan. 

'  Yes ! '  she  said,  looking  at  him  with  a  little  frown,  '  yes — 
what  did  you  say  ? ' 

Then  she  saw  that  his  whole  face  was  working  with  emotion. 

'  I  wish  you  would  have  stayed  like  that,'  he  said,  in  a  voice 
which  trembled. 

'Why?' 

'  Because — because  it  was  so  sweet ! ' 

She  gave  a  little  start,  and  a  sudden  red  sprang  into  her 
cheek. 

His  heart  leapt.  He  had  never  seen  her  blush  for  any  word 
of  his  before. 

'  I  prefer  the  air  itself,'  she  said,  bending  forward  and  looking 
away  from  him  out  of  the  open  window  at  the  villas  they  were 
passing. 

Yet,  all  the  while,  as  the  country  houses  succeeded  each  other 
and  her  eyes  followed  them,  she  saw  not  their  fragrant,  flowery 
gardens,  but  the  dark  face  and  tall  young  form  opposite.  He  was 
handsomer  even  than  when  she  had  seen  him  first — handsomer 
far  than  her  portrait  of  him.  Was  it  the  daily  commerce  with 
new  forms  of  art  and  intelligence  which  Paris  and  her  compan- 
ionship had  brought  him  ? — or  simply  the  added  care  which  a 
man  in  love  instinctively  takes  of  the  little  details  of  his  dress 
and  social  conduct  ? — which  had  given  him  this  look  of  greater 
maturity,  greater  distinction  ?  Her  heart  fluttered  a  little — then 
she  fell  back  on  the  thought  of  Taranne's  letter. 

They  emerged  from  the  station  at  St.  Germain  into  a  fierce 
blaze  of  sun,  which  burned  on  the  square  red  mass  of  the  old 
chateau,  and  threw  a  blinding  glare  on  the  white  roads. 

'  Quick  !  for  the  trees  ! '  she  said,  and  they  both  hurried  over 
the  open  space  which  lay  between  them  and  the  superb  chestnut 
grove  which  borders  the  famous  terrace.  Once  there  all  was 
well,  and  they  could  wander  from  alley  to  alley  in  a  green  shade, 
the  white  blossom-spikes  shining  in  the  sun  overhead,  and  to 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND   STRESS  319 

their  right  the  blue  and  purple  plain,  with  the  Seine  winding  and 
dimpling,  the  river  polders  with  their  cattle,  and  far  away  the 
dim  heights  of  Montmartre  just  emerging  behind  the  great  mass 
of  Mont  Valerien,  which  blocked  the  way  to  Paris.  Such  lights 
and  shades,  such  spring  leaves,  such  dancing  airs  ! 

Elise  drew  a  long  breath,  slipped  off  her  jacket  which  he  made 
a  joy  of  carrying,  and  loosened  the  black  lace  at  her  throat  which 
fell  so  prettily  over  the  little  pink  cotton  underneath. 

Then  she  looked  at  her  companion  unsteadily.  There  was 
excitement  in  this  light  wind,  this  summer  sun.  Her  great 
resolve  to  '  end  it '  began  to  look  less  clear  to  her.  Nay,  she 
stood  still  and  smiled  up  into  his  face,  a  very  siren  of  provocation 
and  wild  charm — the  wind  blowing  a  loose  lock  about  her  eyes. 

'  Is  this  better  than  England — than  your  Manchester  ? '  she 
asked  him  scornfully,  and  he — traitor  ! — flinging  out  of  his  mind 
all  the  bounties  of  an  English  May,  all  his  memories  of  the  white- 
thorn and  waving  fern  and  foaming  streams  set  in  the  deep 
purple  breast  of  the  Scout — vowed  to  her  that  nowhere  else  could 
there  be  spring  or  beauty  or  sunshine,  but  only  here  in  France 
and  at  St.  Germain. 

At  this  she  smiled  and  blushed — no  woman  could  have  helped 
the  blush.  In  truth,  his  will,  steadily  bent  on  one  end,  while 
hers  was  distracted  by  half  a  dozen  different  impulses,  was 
beginning  to  affect  her  in  a  troubling,  paralysing  way.  For  all 
her  parade  of  a  mature  and  cynical  enlightenment,  she  was  just 
twenty  ;  it  was  such  a  May  day  as  never  was  ;  and  when  once 
she  had  let  herself  relax  towards  him  again,  the  inward  ache  of 
jealous  ambition  made  this  passionate  worship  beside  her,  irrele- 
vant as  it  was,  all  the  more  soothing,  all  the  more  luring. 

Still  she  felt  that  something  must  be  done  to  stem  the  tide, 
and  again  she  fell  back  upon  luncheon.  They  had  bought  some 
provisions  on  their  way  to  the  station  in  Paris.  He  might  subsist 
on  scenery  and  aesthetics  if  he  pleased — as  for  her,  she  was  a 
common  person  with  common  needs,  and  must  eat. 

'  Oh,  not  here  ! '  he  cried,  '  why,  this  is  all  in  public.  Look  at 
the  nursemaids,  and  the  boys  playing,  and  the  carriages  on  the 
terrace.  Come  on  a  little  farther.  You  remember  that  open  place 
with  the  thorns  and  the  stream  ? — there  we  should  be  in  peace.' 

She  did  not  know  that  she  wanted  to  be  in  peace  ;  but  she 
gave  way. 

So  they  wandered  on  past  the  chestnuts  into  the  tangled 
depths  of  the  old  forest.  A  path  sunk  in  brambles  and  fern  took 
them  through  beech  wood  to  the  little  clearing  David  had  in  his 
mind.  A  tiny  stream  much  choked  by  grass  and  last  year's 
leaves  ran  along  one  side  of  it.  A  fallen  log  made  a  seat,  and 
the  beech  trees  spread  their  new  green  fans  overhead,  or  flung 
them  out  to  right  and  left  around  the  little  space,  and  for  some 
distance  in  front,  till  the  green  sprays  and  the  straight  grey  stems 
were  lost  on  all  sides  in  a  brownish  pinkish  mist  which  betrayed  a 
girdle  of  oaks  not  yet  conquered  by  the  summer. 


320  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

She  took  her  seat  on  the  log,  and  he  flung  himself  beside  her. 
Out  came  the  stores  in  his  pockets,  and  once  more  they  made 
themselves  childishly  merry  over  a  scanty  meal,  which  left  them 
still  hungry. 

Then  for  an  hour  or  two  they  sat  lounging  and  chattering  in 
the  warm  shade,  while  the  gentle  wind  brought  them  every  spring 
scent,  every  twitter  of  the  birds,  every  swaying  murmur  of  the 
forest.  David  lay  on  his  back  against  the  log,  his  eyes  now 
plunging  into  the  forest,  now  watching  the  curls  of  smoke  from  his 
pipe  mounting  against  the  background  of  green,  or  the  moist  fleecy 
clouds  which  seemed  to  be  actually  tangled  in  the  tree-tops,  now 
fixed  as  long  as  they  dared  on  his  companion's  face.  She  was 
not  beautiful  ?  Let  her  say  it !  For  she  had  the  softest  mouth 
which  drooped  like  a  child  with  a  grievance  when  she  was  silent, 
and  melted  into  the  subtlest  curves  when  she  talked.  She  had, 
as  a  rule,  no  colour,  but  her  clear  paleness,  as  contrasted  with  the 
waves  of  her  light-gold  hair,  seemed  to  him  an  exquisite  beauty. 
The  eyebrows  had  an  oriental  trick  of  mounting  at  the  corners, 
but  the  effect,  taken  with  the  droop  of  the  mouth,  was  to  give  the 
face  in  repose  a  certain  charming  look  of  delicate  and  plaintive 
surprise.  Above  all  it  was  her  smallness  which  entranced  him  ; 
her  feet  and  hands,  her  tiny  waist,  the  finesse  of  her  dress  and 
movements.  All  the  women  he  had  ever  seen,  Lucy  and  Dora 
among  them,  served  at  this  moment  only  to  make  a  foil  in  his 
mind  for  this  little  Parisian  beside  him. 

How  she  talked  this  afternoon  !  In  her  quick  reaction  towards 
him  she  was  after  all  more  the  woman  than  she  had  ever  been. 
She  chattered  of  her  forlorn  childhood,  of  her  mother's  woes  and 
her  father's  iniquities,  using  the  frankest  language  about  these 
last ;  then  of  herself  and  her  troubles.  He  listened  and  laughed; 
his  look  as  she  poured  herself  out  to  him  was  in  itself  a  caress. 
Moreover,  unconsciously  to  both,  their  relation  had  changed 
somewhat.  The  edge  of  his  first  ignorance  and  shyness  had 
rubbed  off.  He  was  no  longer  a  mere  slave  at  her  feet.  Rather 
a  new  and  sweet  equality  seemed  at  last  after  all  these  days  to 
have  arisen  between  them ;  a  bond  more  simple,  more  natural. 
Every  now  and  then  he  caught  his  breath  under  the  sense  of  a 
coming  crisis  ;  meanwhile  the  May  day  was  a  dream  of  joy,  and 
life  an  intoxication. 

But  he  controlled  himself  long,  being  indeed  in  desperate  fear 
of  breaking  the  spell  which  held  her  to  him  this  heavenly  after- 
noon. The  hours  slipped  by  ;  the  air  grew  stiller  and  sultrier. 
Presently,  just  as  the  sun  was  sinking  into  the  western  wood,  a 
woman,  carrying  a  bundle  and  with  a  couple  of  children,  crossed 
the  glade.  One  child  was  on  her  arm ;  the  other,  whimpering 
with  heat  and  fatigue,  dragged  wearily  behind  her,  a  dead  weight 
on  its  mother's  skirts.  The  woman  looked  worn  out,  and  was 
scolding  the  crying  child  in  a  thin  exasperated  voice.  When  she 
came  to  the  stream,  she  put  down  her  bundle,  and  finding  a  seat 
by  the  water,  she  threw  back  her  cotton  bonnet  and  began  to 


CHAP,  vi  STOKM  AND   STRESS  321 

wipe  her  brow,  with  long  breaths  which  were  very  near  to  groans. 
Then  the  child  on  her  lap  set  up  a  shout  of  hunger,  while  the 
child  behind  her  began  to  cry  louder  than  before.  The  woman 
hastily  raised  the  baby,  unfastened  her  dress,  and  gave  it  the 
breast,  so  stifling  its  cries  ;  then,  first  slapping  the  other  child 
with  angry  vehemence,  she  groped  in  the  bundle  for  a  piece  of 
sausage  roll,  and  by  dint  of  alternately  shaking  the  culprit  and 
stuffing  the  food  into  its  poor  open  mouth,  succeeded  in  reducing 
it  to  a  chewing  and  sobbing  silence.  The  mother  herself  was 
clearly  at  the  last  gasp,  and  when  at  length  the  children  were 
quiet,  as  she  turned  her  harshly  outlined  head  so  as  to  see  who 
the  other  occupants  of  the  glade  might  be,  her  look  had  in  it  the 
dull  hostility  of  the  hunted  creature  whose  powers  of  self-defence 
are  almost  gone. 

But  she  could  not  rest  long.  After  ten  minutes,  at  longest,  she 
dragged  herself  up  from  the  grass  with  another  groan,  and  they 
all  disappeared  into  the  trees,  one  of  the  children  crying  again — a 
pitiable  trio. 

Elise  had  watched  the  group  closely,  and  the  sight  seemed  in 
some  unexplained  way  to  chill  and  irritate  the  girl. 

'  There  is  one  of  the  drudges  that  men  make,'  she  said  bitterly, 
looking  after  the  woman. 

1  Men  ? '  he  demurred  ;  '  I  suspect  the  Imsband  is  a  drudge 
too.' 

'  Not  he  ! '  she  cried.  '  At  least  he  has  liberty,  choice,  com- 
rades. He  is  not  battered  out  of  all  pleasure,  all  individuality, 
that  other  human  beings  may  have  their  way  and  be  cooked  for, 
and  this  wretched  human  race  may  last.  The  woman  is  always 
the  victim,  say  what  you  like.  But  for  some  of  us  at  least  there 
is  a  way  out ! ' 

She  looked  at  him  defiantly. 

A  tremor  swept  through  him  under  the  suddenness  of  this 
jarring  note.  Then  a  delicious  boldness  did  away  with  the  tremor. 
He  met  her  eyes  straight. 

'  Yes — love  can  always  find  it,'  he  said  under  his  breath — '  or 
make  it.' 

She  wavered  an  instant,  then  she  made  a  rally. 

'I  know  nothing  about  that,'  she  said  scornfully;  'I  was 
thinking  of  art.  Art  breaks  all  chains,  or  accepts  none.  The 
woman  that  has  art  is  free,  and  she  alone  ;  for  she  has  scaled  the 
men's  heaven  and  stolen  their  sacred  fire.' 

She  clasped  her  hands  tightly  on  her  knee  ;  her  face  was  full 
of  aggression. 

David  sat  looking  at  her,  trying  to  smile,  but  his  heart  sank 
within  him. 

He  threw  away  his  pipe,  and  laid  his  head  down  against  the 
log,  not  far  from  her,  drawing  his  hat  over  his  eyes.  So  they  sat 
in  silence  a  little  while,  till  he  looked  up  and  said,  in  a  bright 
beseeching  tone  : 

'  Finish  me  that  scene  in  Hernani  ! ' 


322  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

The  day  before,  after  a  matinee  of  Andromaque  at  the 
Theatre-Francais,  in  a  moment  of  rebellion  and  reaction  against 
all  things  classical,  they  had  both  thrown  themselves  upon 
Hernani.  She  had  read  it  aloud  to  him  in  a  green  corner  of  the 
Bois,  having  a  faculty  that  way,  and  bidding  him  take  it  as  a 
French  lesson.  He  took  it,  of  course,  as  a  lesson  in  nothing  but 
the  art  of  making  wild  speeches  to  the  woman  one  loves. 

But  now  she  demurred. 

'  It  is  not  here.' 

He  produced  it  out  of  his  pocket. 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

'  I  am  not  in  the  vein.' 

'  You  said  last  week  you  were  not  in  the  vein,'  he  said,  laugh- 
ing tremulously,  '  and  you  read  me  that  scene  from  Ruy  Bias,  so 
that  when  we  went  to  see  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  the  evening  I  was 
disappointed  ! ' 

She  smiled,  not  being  able  to  help  it,  for  all  flattery  was  sweet 
to  her. 

'  We  must  catch  our  train.  I  would  never  speak  to  you  again 
if  we  were  late  ! ' 

He  held  up  his  watch  to  her. 

'An  hour — it  is,  at  the  most,  half  an  hour's  walk.' 

'  Ah,  mon  Dieu  ! '  she  cried,  clasping  her  hands.  '  It  is  all 
over,  the  vote  is  given.  Perhaps  Taranne  is  writing  to  me  now, 
at  this  moment ! ' 

'  Read — read  !  and  forget  it  half  an  hour  more. ' 

She  caught  up  the  book  in  a  frenzy,  and  began  to  read,  first 
carelessly  and  with  unintelligible  haste ;  but  before  a  page  was 
over,  the  artist  had  recaptured  her,  she  had  slackened,  she  had 
begun  to  interpret. 

It  was  the  scene  in  the  third  act  where  Hernani  the  outlaw, 
who  has  himself  bidden  his  love,  Dona  Sol,  marry  her  kinsman 
the  old  Duke,  rather  than  link  her  fortunes  to  those  of  a  ruined 
chief  of  banditti,  comes  in  upon  the  marriage  he  has  sanctioned, 
nay  commanded.  The  bridegroom's  wedding  gifts  are  there  on 
the  table.  He  and  Dona  Sol  are  alone. 

The  scene  begins  with  a  speech  of  bitter  irony  from  Hernani. 
His  friends  have  been  defeated  and  dispersed.  He  is  alone  in  the 
world  ;  a  price  is  on  his  head  ;  his  lot  is  more  black  and  hopeless 
than  before.  Yet  his  heart  is  bursting  within  him.  He  had 
bidden  her,  indeed,  but  how  could  she  have  obeyed  !  Traitress  ! 
false  love  !  false  heart ! 

He  takes  up  the  jewels  one  by  one. 

'  This  necklace  is  brave  work, — and  the  bracelet  is  rare — 
though  not  so  rare  as  the  woman  who  beneath  a  brow  so  pure  can 
bear  about  with  her  a  heart  so  vile  !  And  what  in  exchange  ?  A 
little  love  ?  Bah  ! — a  mere  trifle  !  .  .  .  Great  God  !  that  one  can 
betray  like  this — and  feel  no  shame — and  live!'1 

For  answer,  Dona  Sol  goes  proudly  up  to  the  wedding  casket, 
and,  with  a  gesture  matching  his  own,  takes  out  the  dagger  from 


CHAP,  vi  STOHM  AND   STRESS  323 

its  lowest  depth.  '  You  stop  halfway  ! '  she  says  to  him  calmly, 
and  he  understands.  In  an  instant  he  is  at  her  feet,  tortured 
with  remorse  and  passion,  and  the  magical  love  scene  of  the  act 
develops.  What  ingenuity  of  tenderness,  yet  what  truth  ! 

'  She  has  pardoned  me,  and  loves  me  !  Ah,  who  will  make  it 
possible  that  I  too,  after  such  words,  should  love  Hernani  and 
forgive  him  ?  Tears  ! — thou  weepest,  and  again  it  is  my  fault  ! 
And  who  will  punish  me  ?  for  thou  wilt  but  forgive  again ! 
Ah,  my  friends  are  all  dead  ! — and  it  is  a  madman  speaks  to 
thee.  Forgive!  I  would  fain  love — /  know  not  how.  And  yet, 
what  deeper  love  could  there  be  than  this  ?  Oh  !  Weep  not,  but 
die  with  me  !  If  I  had  but  a  world,  and  could  give  it  thee  ! ' 

The  voice  of  the  reader  quivered.  A  hand  came  upon  the 
book  and  caught  her  hand,  She  looked  up  and  found  herself  face 
to  face  with  David,  kneeling  beside  her.  They  stared  at  each 
other.  Then  he  said,  half  choked  : 

'  I  can't  bear  it  any  more  !  I  love  you  with  all  my  heart — oh, 
you  know — you  know  I  do  ! ' 

She  was  stupefied  for  a  moment,  and  then  with  a  sudden  ges- 
ture she  drew  herself  away,  and  pushed  him  from  her. 

'  Leave  me  alone — leave  me  free — this  moment ! '  she  said 
passionately.  '  Why  do  you  persecute  and  pursue  me  ?  What 
right  have  you  ?  I  have  been  kind  to  you,  and  you  lay  snares  for 
me.  I  will  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  you.  Let  me  go  home, 
and  let  us  part.' 

She  got  up,  and  with  feverish  haste  tied  her  veil  over  her  hat. 
He  had  fallen  with  his  arms  across  the  log,  and  his  face  hidden 
upon  them.  She  paused  irresolutely. 

'  Monsieur  David  ! ' 

He  made  no  answer. 

She  bent  down  and  touched  him. 

He  shook  his  head. 

'  No,  no  ! — go  ! '  he  said  thickly. 

She  bit  her  lip.  The  breath  under  her  little  lace  tippet  rose 
and  fell  with  furious  haste.  Then  she  sat  down  beside  him,  and 
with  her  hands  clasped  on  her  knee  began  to  plead  with  him  in 
tremulous  light  tones,  as  though  they  were  a  pair  of  children. 
Why  was  he  so  foolish  ?  Why  had  he  tried  to  spoil  their  beautiful 
afternoon  ?  She  must  go.  The  train  would  not  wait  for  them. 
But  he  must  come  too.  He  mitst. 

After  a  little  he  rose  without  a  word,  gathered  up  the  book 
and  her  wrap,  and  off  they  set  along  the  forest  path. 

She  stole  a  glance  at  him.  It  seemed  to  her  that  he  walked  as 
if  he  did  not  know  where  he  was  or  who  was  beside  him. 

Her  heart  smote  her.  When  they  were  deep  in  a  hazel  thicket, 
she  stole  out  a  small  impulsive  hand,  and  slipped  it  into  his,  which 
hung  beside  him.  He  started.  Presently  she  felt  a  slight  pressure, 
but  it  relaxed  instantly,  and  she  took  back  her  hand,  feeling 
ashamed  of  herself,  and  aggrieved  besides.  She  shot  on  in  front 
of  him,  and  he  followed. 


324  THE  HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  ill 

So  they  walked  through  the  chestnuts  and  across  the  white 
road  to  the  station  in  the  red  glow  of  the  evening  sun.  He 
followed  her  into  the  railway  carriage,  did  her  every  little  service 
with  perfect  gentleness ;  then  when  they  started  he  took  the 
opposite  corner,  and  turning  away  from  her,  stared,  with  eyes 
that  evidently  saw  nothing,  at  the  villas  beside  the  line,  at  the 
children  in  the  streets,  at  the  boats  on  the  dazzling  river. 

She  in  her  corner  tried  to  be  angry,  to  harden  her  heart,  to 
possess  herself  only  with  the  thought  of  Taranne's  letter.  But 
the  evening  was  not  as  the  morning.  That  dark  teasing  figure 
at  the  other  end,  outlined  against  the  light  of  the  window, 
intruded,  took  up  a  share  in  her  reverie  she  resented  but  could 
not  prevent — nay,  presently  absorbed  it  altogether.  Absurd  ! 
she  had  had  love  made  to  her  before,  and  had  known  how  to  deal 
with  it.  The  artist  must  have  comrades,  and  the  comrades  may 
play  false  ;  well,  then  the  artist  must  take  care  of  herself. 

She  had  done  no  harm ;  she  was  not  to  blame  ;  she  had  let 
him  know  from  the  beginning  that  she  only  lived  for  art.  What 
folly,  and  what  treacherous,  inconsiderate  folly,  it  had  all  been  ! 

So  she  lashed  herself  up.  But  her  look  stole  incessantly  to 
that  opposite  corner,  and  every  now  and  then  she  felt  her  lips 
trembling  and  her  eyes  growing  hot  in  a  way  which  annoyed 
her. 

When  they  reached  Paris  she  said  to  him  imperiously  as  he 
helped  her  out  of  the  carriage,  '  A  cab,  please  ! ' 

He  found  one  for  her,  and  would  have  closed  the  door  upon 
her. 

'  No,  come  in  ! '  she  said  to  him  with  the  same  accent. 

His  look  in  return  was  like  a  blow  to  her,  there  was  such  an 
inarticulate  misery  in  it.  But  he  got  in,  and  they  drove  on  in 
silence. 

When  they  reached  the  Rue  Chantal  she  sprang  out,  snatched 
her  key  from  the  concierge,  and  ran  up  the  stairs.  But  when  she 
reached  the  point  on  that  top  passage  where  their  ways  diverged, 
she  stopped  and  looked  back  for  him. 

'  Come  and  see  my  letter,'  she  said  to  him,  hesitating. 

He  stood  quite  still,  his  arms  hanging  beside  him,  and  drew  a 
long  breath  that  stabbed  her. 

4 1  think  not. ' 

Anil  he  turned  away  to  his  own  door. 

But  she  ran  back  to  him  and  laid  her  hand  on  his  arm.  Her 
eyes  were  full  of  tears. 

'  Please,  Monsieur  David.  We  were  good  friends  this  morn- 
ing. Be  now  and  always  my  good  friend  ! ' 

He  shook  his  head  again,  but  he  let  himself  be  led  by  her. 
Still  holding  him — torn  between  her  quick  remorse  and  her 
eagerness  for  Taranne's  letter,  she  unlocked  her  door.  One  dart 
for  the  table.  Yes  I  there  it  lay.  She  took  it  up  ;  then  her  face 
blanched  suddenly,  and  she  came  piteously  up  to  David,  who  was 
standing  just  inside  the  closed  door. 


CHAP,  vi  STORM  AND   STRESS  325 

'  "Wish  me  luck,  Monsieur  David,  wish  me  luck,  as  you  did 
before  ! ' 

But  he  was  silent,  and  she  tore  open  the  letter.  '  Dieu  ! — 
mon  Dieu  ! ' 

It  was  a  sound  of  ecstasy.  Then  she  flung  down  the  letter, 
and  running  up  to  David,  she  caught  his  arm  again  with  both 
hands. 

'  Triomphe  !  Triomphe  !  I  have  got  my  mention,  and  the 
picture  they  skied  is  to  be  brought  down  to  the  line,  and  Taranne 
says  I  have  done  better  than  any  other  pupil  of  his  of  the  same 
standing — that  I  have  an  extraordinary  gift — that  I  must  succeed, 
all  the  world  says  so — and  two  other  members  of  the  jury  send 
me  their  compliments.  Ah  !  Monsieur  David ' — in  a  tone  of 
reproach — 'be  kind — be  nice — congratulate  me.' 

And  she  drew  back  an  arm's-length  that  she  might  look  at 
him,  her  own  face  overflowing  with  exultant  colour  and  life. 
Then  she  approached  again,  her  mood  changing. 

'  It  is  too  detestable  of  you  to  stand  there  like  a  statue  !  ah  ! 
that  it  is  !  For  I  never  deceived  you,  no,  never.  1  said  to  you 
the  first  night — there  is  nothing  else  for  me  in  the  world  but  art 
— nothing  !  Do  you  hear  ?  This  falling  in  love  spoils  everything 
— everything  !  Be  friends  with  me.  You  will  be  going  back  to 
England  soon.  Perhaps — perhaps ' — her  voice  faltered — '  I  will 
take  a  week's  more  holiday — Taranne  says  I  ought.  But  then  I 
must  go  to  work — and  we  will  part  friends — always  friends — and 
respect  and  understand  each  other  all  our  lives,  n'est-ce  pas  ? ' 

'  Oh  !  let  me  go  ! '  cried  David  fiercely,  his  loud  strained  voice 
startling  them  both,  and  flinging  her  hand  away  from  him,  he 
made  for  the  door.  But  impulsively  she  threw  herself  against  it, 
dismayed  to  find  herself  so  near  crying,  and  shaken  with  emotion 
from  head  to  foot. 

They  stood  absorbed  in  each  other  ;  she  with  her  hands  behind 
her  on  the  door,  and  her  hat  tumbling  back  from  her  masses  of 
loosened  hair.  And  as  she  gazed  she  was  fascinated  ;  for  there 
was  a  grand  look  about  him  in  his  misery — a  look  which  was 
strange  to  her,  and  which  was  in  fact  the  emergence  of  his 
rugged  and  Puritan  race.  But  whatever  it  was  it  seized  her,  as 
all  aspects  of  his  personal  beauty  had  done  from  the  beginning. 
She  held  out  her  little  white  hands  to  him  appealing. 

'  No  !  no  ! '  he  said  roughly,  trying  to  put  her  away,  '  never — 
never — friends  !  You  may  kill  me — you  shan't  make  a  child  of 
me  any  more.  Oh  !  my  God  ! '  It  was  a  cry  of  agony.  '  A  man 
can't  go  about  with  a  girl  in  this  way,  if — if  she  is  like  you,  and 
not — '  His  voice  broke — he  lost  the  thread  of  what  he  was 
saying,  and  drew  his  hand  across  his  eyes  before  he  broke  out 
again.  '  What— you  thought  I  was  just  a  raw  cub,  to  be  played 
with.  Oh,  I  am  too  dull,  I  suppose,  to  understand  !  But  I  have 
grown  under  your  hands  anyway.  I  don't  know  myself — I  should 
do  you  or  myself  a  mischief  if  this  'went  on.  Let  me  go — and  go 
home  to-night ! ' 


326  THE  HISTOKY   OF  DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

And  again  he  made  a  threatening  step  forward.  But  when  he 
came  close  to  her  he  broke  down. 

'  I  would  have  worked  for  you  so,'  he  said  thickly.  '  For  your 
sake  I  would  have  given  up  my  country.  I  would  have  made 
myself  French  altogether.  It  should  have  been  marriage  or  no 
marriage  as  you  pleased.  You  should  have  been  free  to  go  or  stay. 
Only  I  would  have  laid  myself  down  for  you  to  walk  over.  I  have 
some  money.  I  would  have  settled  here.  I  would  have  protected 
you.  It  is  not  right  for  a  woman  to  be  alone — anyone  so  young 
and  so  pretty.  I  thought  you  understood — that  you  must  under- 
stand— that  your  heart  was  melting  to  me.  I  should  have  done 
your  work  no  harm — I  should  have  been  your  slave — you  know 
that.  That  cursed,  cursed  art ! ' 

He  spoke  with  a  low  intense  emphasis  ;  then  turning  away  he 
buried  his  face  in  his  hands. 

'  David  ! ' 

He  looked  up  startled.  She  was  stepping  towards  him,  a  smile 
of  ineffable  charm  floating  as  it  were  upon  her  tears. 

'  I  don't  know  what  is  the  matter  with  me  ! '  she  said  tremu- 
lously. '  There  is  trouble  in  it,  I  know !  It  is  the  broken  glass 
coming  true.  Mais,  rayons  !  c'est  plus  fort  que  moi  !  Do  you 
care  so  much — would  it  break  your  heart — would  you  let  me  work 
— and  never,  never  get  in  the  way  ?  Would  you  be  content  that 
art  should  come  first  and  you  second  ?  I  can  promise  you  no 
more  than  that — not  one  little  inch  !  Would  you  be  content  ? 
Say!' 

He  ran  to  her  with  a  cry.  She  let  him  put  his  arms  round 
her,  and  a  shiver  of  excitement  ran  through  her. 

'  What  does  it  mean  ? '  she  said  breathlessly.  '  One  is  so 
strong  one  moment — and  the  next — like  this  !  Oh,  why  did  you 
ever  come  ? ' 

Then  she  burst  into  tears,  hiding  her  eyes  upon  his  breast. 

'  Oh  !  I  have  been  so  much  alone  !  but  I  have  got  a  heart 
somewhere  all  the  same.  If  you  will  have  it,  you  must  take  the 
consequences.' 

Awed  by  the  mingling  of  his  silence  with  that  painful  throb- 
bing beneath  her  cheek,  she  looked  up.  He  stooped — and  their 
young  faces  met. 

CHAPTER  VII 

DURING  the  three  weeks  which  had  ended  for  David  and  Elise  in 
this  scene  of  passion,  Louie  had  been  deliberately  going  her  own 
way,  managing  even  in  this  unfamiliar  milieu  to  extract  from  it 
almost  all  the  excitement  or  amusement  it  was  capable  of  yielding 
her.  All  the  morning  she  dragged  Madame  Cervin  about  the 
Paris  streets  ;  in  the  afternoon  she  would  sometimes  pose  for 
Montjoie,  and  sometimes  not ;  he  had  to  bring  her  bonbons  and 
theatre  tickets  to  bribe  her,  and  learn  new  English  wherewith  to 
flatter  her.  Then  in  the  evenings  she  made  the  Cervins  take  her 


CHAP,  vn  STORM   AND   STRESS  327 

to  theatres  and  various  entertainments  more  or  less  reputable,  for 
which  of  course  David  paid.  It  seemed  to  Madame  Cervin,  as 
she  sat  staring  beside  them,  that  her  laughs  never  fell  in  with  the 
laughs  of  other  people.  But  whether  she  understood  or  no,  it 
amused  her,  and  go  she  would. 

A  looker-on  might  have  found  the  relations  between  Madame 
Cervin  and  her  boarder  puzzling  at  first  sight.  In  reality  they 
represented  a  compromise  between  considerations  of  finance  and 
considerations  of  morals — as  the  wife  of  the  ancien  prix  de  Rome 
understood  these  last.  For  the  ex-modiste  was  by  no  means 
without  her  virtues  or  her  scruples.  She  had  ugly  manners  and 
ideas  on  many  points,  but  she  had  lived  a  decent  life  at  any  rate 
since  her  marriage  with  a  man  for  whom  she  had  an  incompre- 
hensible affection,  heavily  as  he  burdened  and  exploited  her ;  and 
though  she  took  all  company  pretty  much  as  it  came,  she  had  a 
much  keener  sense  now  than  in  her  youth  of  the  practical 
advantages  of  good  behaviour  to  a  woman,  and  of  the  general 
reasonableness  of  the  bourgeois  point  of  view  with  regard  to 
marriage  and  the  family.  Her  youth  had  been  stormy ;  her 
middle  age  tended  to  a  certain  conservative  philosophy  of  com- 
mon sense,  and  to  the  development  of  a  rough  and  ready 
conscience. 

Especially  was  she  conscious  of  the  difficulties  of  virtue. 
When  Elise  Delaunay,  for  instance,  was  being  scandalously 
handled  by  the  talkers  in  her  stuffy  salon,  Madame  Cervin  sat 
silent.  Not  only  had  she  her  own  reasons  for  being  grateful  to 
the  little  artist,  but  with  the  memory  of  her  own  long-past  adven- 
tures behind  her  she  was  capable  by  now  of  a  secret  admiration 
for  an  unprotected  and  struggling  girl  who  had  hitherto  held  her 
head  high,  worked  hard,  and  avoided  lovers. 

So  that  when  the  artist's  wife  undertook  the  charge  of  the 
good-looking  English  girl  she  had  done  it  honestly,  up  to  her 
lights,  and  she  had  fulfilled  it  honestly.  She  had  in  fact  hardly 
let  Louie  Grieve  out  of  her  sight  since  her  boarder  was  handed 
over  to  her. 

These  facts,  however,  represent  only  one  side  of  the  situation. 
Madame  Cervin  was  now  respectable.  She  had  relinquished 
years  before  the  chasse  for  personal  excitement ;  she  had  replaced 
it  by  '  the  chasse  of  the  five-franc  piece. '  She  loved  her  money 
passionately  ;  but  at  the  same  time  she  loved  power,  gossip,  and 
small  flatteries.  They  distracted  her,  these  last,  from  the 
depressing  spectacle  of  her  husband's  gradual  and  inevitable 
decay.  So  that  her  life  represented  a  balance  between  these 
various  instincts.  For  some  time  past  she  had  gathered  about 
her  a  train  of  small  artists,  whom  she  mothered  and  patronised, 
and  whose  wild  talk  and  pecuniary  straits  diversified  the  mono- 
tony of  her  own  childless  middle  age.  Montjoie,  whose  undoubted 
talent  imposed  upon  a  woman  governed  during  all  her  later  life 
by  the  traditions  and  the  admirations  of  the  artist  world,  had 
some  time  before  established  a  hold  upon  her,  partly  dependent 


328  THE  HISTOET  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

on  a  certain  magnetism  in  the  man,  partly,  as  Elise  had  sus- 
pected, npon  money  relations.  For  the  grasping  little  bourgeoise 
who  would  haggle  for  a  morning  over  half  a  franc,  and  keep  a 
lynx-eyed  watch  over  the  woman  who  came  to  do  the  weekly 
cleaning,  lest  the  miserable  creature  should  appropriate  a  crust 
or  a  cold  potato,  had  a  weak  side  for  her  artist  friends  who  flat- 
tered and  amused  her.  She  would  lend  to  them  now  and  then  out 
of  her  hoards  ;  she  had  lent  to  Montjoie  in  the  winter  when,  after 
months  of  wild  dissipation,  he  was  in  dire  straits  and  almost 
starving. 

But  having  lent,  the  thought  of  her  jeopardised  money  would 
throw  her  into  agonies,  and  she  would  scheme  perpetually  to  get 
it  back.  Like  all  the  rest  of  Montjoie's  creditors  she  was  hanging 
on  the  Maenad,  which  promised  indeed  to  be  the  chef-d'ceuvre  of 
an  indisputable  talent,  could  that  talent  only  be  kept  to  work. 
When  the  sculptor — whose  curiosity  had  been  originally  roused 
by  certain  phrases  of  Barbier's  in  his  preliminary  letters  to  his 
nephew,  phrases  embellished  by  Dubois'  habitual  fanfaronnade 
— had  first  beheld  the  English  girl,  he  had  temporarily  thrown  up 
his  work  and  was  lounging  about  Paris  in  moody  despair,  to 
Madame  Cervin's  infinite  disgust.  But  at  sight  of  Louie  his 
artist's  zeal  rekindled.  Her  wild  nature,  her  half -human  eye,  the 
traces  of  Greek  form  in  the  dark  features — these  things  fired  and 
excited  him. 

'  Get  me  that  girl  to  sit,'  he  had  said  to  Madame  Cervin,  '  and 
the  Maanad  will  be  sold  in  six  weeks ! ' 

And  Madame  Cervin,  fully  determined  on  the  one  hand  that 
Montjoie  should  finish  his  statue  and  pay  his  debts,  and  on  the 
other  that  the  English  girl  should  come  to  no  harm  from  a 
man  of  notorious  character,  had  first  led  up  to  the  sittings,  and 
then  superintended  them  with  the  utmost  vigilance.  She  meant 
no  harm — the  brother  was  a  fool  for  his  pains — but  Montjoie 
should  have  his  sitter.  So  she  sat  there,  dragon-like,  hour  after 
hour,  knitting  away  with  her  little  fat  hands,  while  Louie  posed, 
and  Montjoie  worked  ;  and  groups  of  the  sculptor's  friends  came 
in  and  out,  providing  the  audience  which  excited  the  ambition  of 
the  man  and  the  vanity  of  the  girl. 

So  the  days  passed.  At  last  there  came  a  morning  when 
Louie  came  out  early  from  the  Cervins'  door,  shut  it  behind  her, 
and  ran  up  the  ladder-like  stairs  which  led  to  David's  room. 

'  David  ! ' 

Her  voice  was  pitched  in  no  amiable  key,  as  she  violently 
shook  the  handle  of  the  door.  But,  call  and  shake  as  she  might, 
there  was  no  answer,  and  after  a  while  she  paused,  feeling  a 
certain  bewilderment. 

'  It  is  ridiculous  !  He  can't  be  out ;  it  isn't  half -past  eight. 
It's  just  his  tiresomeness.' 

And  she  made  another  and  still  more  vehement  attempt,  all 
to  no  purpose.  Not  a  sound  was  to  be  heard  from  the  room 


CHAP,  viz  STORM  AND   STRESS  329 

within.  But  as  she  was  again  standing  irresolute,,  she  heard  a 
footstep  behind  her  on  the  narrow  stairs,  and  looking  round  saw 
the  concierge,  Madame  Merichat.  The  woman's  thin  and  sallow 
face — the  face  of  a  born  pessimist — had  a  certain  sinister  flutter 
in  it. 

She  held  out  a  letter  to  the  astonished  Louie,  saying  at  the 
same  time  with  a  disagreeable  smile  : 

'  What  is  the  use  of  knocking  the  house  down  when  there  is 
no  one  there  ? ' 

'  Where  is  he  ? '  cried  Louie,  not  understanding  her,  and  look- 
ing at  the  letter  with  stupefaction. 

The  woman  put  it  into  her  hand. 

'  No  one  came  back  last  night,'  she  said  with  a  shrug. 
'  Neither  monsieur  nor  mademoiselle  ;  and  this  morning  I  receive 
orders  to  send  letters  to  "  Barbizon,  pres  Fontainebleau. "  ' 

Louie  tore  open  her  letter.  It  was  from  David,  and  dated 
Barbizon.  He  would  be  there,  it  said,  for  nearly  a  month.  If 
she  could  wait  with  Madame  Cervin  till  he  himself  could  take 
her  home,  well  and  good.  But  if  that  were  disagreeable  to  her, 
let  her  communicate  with  him  '  chez  Madame  Pyat,  Barbizon, 
Fontainebleau,'  and  he  would  write  to  Dora  Lomax  at  once,  and 
make  arrangements  for  her  to  lodge  there,  till  he  returned  to 
Manchester.  Some  one  could  easily  be  found  to  look  after  her  on 
the  homeward  journey  if  Madame  Cervin  took  her  to  the  train. 
Meanwhile  he  enclosed  the  money  for  two  weeks'  pension  and 
twenty  francs  for  pocket  money. 

No  other  person  was  mentioned  in  the  letter,  and  the  writer 
offered  neither  explanation  nor  excuses. 

Louie  crushed  the  sheet  in  her  hand,  with  an  exclamation,  her 
cheeks  naming. 

'  So  they  are  amusing  themselves  at  Fontainebleau  ? '  inquired 
Madame  Merichat,  who  had  been  leaning  against  the  wall,  twist- 
ing her  apron  and  studying  the  English  girl  with  her  hard, 
malicious  eyes.  '  Oh  !  I  don't  complain  ;  there  was  a  letter  for 
me  too.  Monsieur  has  paid  all.  But  I  regret  for  mademoiselle — 
if  mademoiselle  is  surprised.' 

She  spoke  to  deaf  ears. 

Louie  pushed  past  her,  flew  downstairs,  and  rang  the  Cervins' 
bell  violently.  Madame  Cervin  herself  opened  the  door,  and  the 
girl  threw  herself  upon  her,  dragged  her  into  the  salon,  and  then 
said  with  the  look  and  tone  of  a  i' ury  : 

'  Read  that  ! ' 

She  held  out  the  crumpled  letter.  Madame  Cervin  adjusted 
her  spectacles  with  shaking  hands. 

'  But  it  is  in  English  ! '  she  cried  in  despair. 

Louie  could  have  beaten  her  for  not  understanding.  But, 
herself  trembling  with  excitement,  she  was  forced  to  bring  all  the 
French  words  she  knew  to  bear,  and  between  them,  somehow, 
piecemeal,  Madame  Cervin  was  brought  to  a  vague  understanding 
of  the  letter. 


330  THE  HISTORY   OP  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

'  Gone  to  Fontainebleau  ! '  she  cried,  subsiding  on  to  the  sofa. 
'  But  why,  with  whom  ? ' 

'  "Why,  with  that  girl,  that  creature — can't  you  understand  ? ' 
said  Louie,  pacing  up  and  down. 

'  Ah,  I  will  go  and  find  out  all  about  that ! '  said  Madame 
Cervin,  and  hastily  exchanging  the  blue  cotton  apron  and  jacket 
she  wore  in  the  mornings  in  the  privacy  of  her  own  apartment 
for  her  walking  dress,  she  whisked  out  to  make  inquiries. 

Louie  was  left  behind,  striding  from  end  to  end  of  the  little 
salon,  brows  knit,  every  feature  and  limb  tense  with  excitement. 
As  the  meaning  of  her  discovery  grew  plainer  to  her,  as  she 
realised  what  had  happened,  and  what  the  bearing  of  it  must  be 
on  herself  and  her  own  position,  the  tumult  within  her  rose  and 
rose.  After  that  day  in  the  Louvre  her  native  shrewdness  had 
of  course  very  soon  informed  her  of  David's  infatuation  for  the 
little  artist.  And  when  it  became  plain,  not  only  to  her,  but  to 
all  Elise  Delaunay's  acquaintance,  there  was  much  laughter  and 
gossip  on  the  subject  in  the  Cervins'  apartment.  It  was  soon 
discovered  that  Louie  had  taken  a  dislike,  which,  perhaps,  from 
the  beginning  had  been  an  intuitive  jealousy,  to  Elise,  and  had, 
moreover,  no  inconvenient  sensitiveness  on  her  brother's  account, 
which  need  prevent  the  discussion  of  his  love  affairs  in  her 
presence.  So  the  discussion  went  freely  on,  and  Louie  only 
regretted  that,  do  what  she  would  to  improve  herself  in  French, 
she  understood  so  little  of  it.  But  the  tone  towards  Elise  among 
Montjoie's  set,  especially  from  Montjoie  himself,  was  clearly  con- 
temptuous and  hostile  ;  and  Louie  instinctively  enjoyed  the  mud 
which  she  felt  sure  was  being  thrown. 

Yet,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  with  all  this  knowledge  on  her 
part,  all  this  amusement  at  her  brother's  expense,  all  this  blacken- 
ing of  Elise's  character,  the  possibility  of  such  an  event  as  had 
actually  occurred  had  never  entered  the  sister's  calculations. 

And  the  reason  lay  in  the  profound  impression  which  one  side 
of  his  character  had  made  upon  her  during  the  five  months  they 
had  been  together.  A  complete  stranger  to  the  ferment  of  the 
lad's  imagination,  she  had  been  a  constant  and  chafed  spectator 
of  his  daily  life.  The  strong  self-restraint  of  it  had  been  one  of 
the  main  barriers  between  them.  She  knew  that  she  was  always 
jarring  upon  him,  and  that  he  was  always  blaming  her  reckless- 
ness and  self-indulgence.  She  hated  his  Spartan  ways — his 
teetotalism,  the  small  store  he  set  by  any  personal  comfort  or 
luxury,  his  powers  of  long-continued  work,  his  indifference  to 
the  pleasures  and  amusements  of  his  age,  so  far  as  Manchester 
could  provide  them.  They  were  a  reflection  upon  her,  and  many 
a  gibe  she  had  flung  out  at  him  about  them.  But  all  the  same 
these  ways  of  his  had  left  a  mark  upon  her ;  they  had  rooted  a 
certain  conception  of  him  in  her  mind.  She  knew  perfectly  well 
that  Dora  Lomax  was  in  love  with  him,  and  what  did  he  care  ? 
'  Not  a  ha'porth  ! '  She  had  never  seen  him  turn  his  head  for  any 
girl ;  and  when  he  had  shown  himself  sarcastic  on  the  subject  of 


CHAP,  vii  STORM  AND   STRESS  331 

her  companions,  she  had  cast  about  in  vain  for  materials  where- 
with to  retort. 

And  now  !  That  he  should  fall  in  love  with  this  French  girl — 
that  was  natural  enough  ;  it  had  amused  and  pleased  her  to  see 
him  lose  his  head  and  make  a  fool  of  himself  like  other  people  ; 
but  that  he  should  run  away  with  her  after  a  fortnight,  without 
apparently  a  word  of  marrying  her — leaving  his  sister  in  the 
lurch — 

'  Hypocrite  ! ' 

She  clenched  her  hands  as  she  walked.  What  was  really 
surging  in  her  was  that  feeling  of  ownership  with  regard  to 
David  which  had  played  so  large  a  part  in  their  childhood,  even 
when  she  had  teased  and  plagued  him  most.  She  might  worry 
and  defy  him  ;  but  no  sooner  did  another  woman  appropriate 
him,  threaten  to  terminate  for  good  that  hold  of  his  sister  upon 
him  which  had  been  so  lately  renewed,  than  she  was  flooded  with 
jealous  rage.  David  had  escaped  her — he  was  hers  no  longer — he 
was  Elise  Delaunay's  !  Nothing  that  she  did  could  scandalise  or 
make  him  angry  any  more.  He  had  sent  her  money  and  washed 
his  hands  of  her.  As  to  his  escorting  her  back  to  England  in  two 
or  three  weeks,  that  was  just  a  lie !  A  man  who  takes  such  a 
plunge  does  not  emerge  so  soon  or  so  easily.  No,  she  would  have 
to  go  back  by  herself,  leaving  him  to  his  intrigue.  The  very 
calmness  and  secretiveness  of  his  letter  was  an  insult.  '  Mind 
your  own  business,  little  girl — go  home  to  work — and  be  good  ! ' 
— that  was  what  it  seemed  to  say  to  her.  She  set  her  teeth  over 
it  in  her  wild  anger  and  pride. 

At  the  same  moment  the  outer  door  opened  and  Madame 
Cervin  came  bustling  back  again,  bursting  with  news  and  indig- 
nation. 

Oh,  there  was  no  doubt  at  all  about  it,  they  had  gone  off 
together  !  Madame  Merichat  had  seen  them  come  downstairs 
about  noon  the  day  before.  He  was  carrying  a  black  bag  and  a 
couple  of  parcels.  She  also  was  laden  ;  and  about  halfway  down 
the  street,  Madame  Merichat,  watching  from  her  window,  had  seen 
them  hail  a  cab,  get  into  it,  and  drive  away,  the  cab  turning  to 
the  right  when  they  reached  the  Boulevard. 

Madame  Cervin's  wrath  was  loud,  and  stimulated  moreover 
by  personal  alarm.  One  moment,  remembering  the  scene  in 
Montjoie's  studio,  she  cried  out,  like  the  sister,  on  the  brother's 
hypocrisy  ;  the  next  she  reminded  her  boarder  that  there  was  two 
weeks'  pension  owing. 

Louie  smiled  scornfully,  drew  out  the  notes  from  David's  letter 
and  flung  them  on  the  table.  Then  Madame  Cervin  softened,  and 
took  occasion  to  remember  that  condolence  with  the  sister  was  at 
least  as  appropriate  to  the  situation  as  abuse  of  the  brother.  She 
attempted  some  consolation,  nay,  even  some  caresses,  but  Louie 
very  soon  shook  her  off. 

'  Don't  talk  to  me  !  don't  kiss  me  ! '  she  said  impatiently. 

And  she  swept  out  of  the  room,  went  to  her  own,  and  locked 


332  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

the  door.  Then  she  threw  herself  face  downwards  on  her  bed, 
and  remained  there  for  some  time  hardly  moving.  But  with 
every  minute  that  passed,  as  it  seemed,  the  inward  smart  grew 
sharper.  She  had  been  hardly  conscious  of  it,  at  first,  this  smart, 
in  her  rage  and  pride,  but  it  was  there. 

•  At  last  she  could  bear  it  quietly  no  longei.  She  sprang  up 
and  looked  about  her.  There,  just  inside  the  open  press  which 
held  her  wardrobe,  were  some  soft  white  folds  of  stuff.  Her  eye 
gleamed  :  she  ran  to  the  cupboard  and  took  out  the  Maenad's 
dress.  During  the  last  few  days  she  had  somewhat  tired  of  the 
sittings — she  had  at  any  rate  been  capricious  and  tiresome  about 
them  ;  and  Montjoie,  who  was  more  in  earnest  about  this  statue 
than  he  had  been  about  any  work  for  years,  was  at  his  wit's  end, 
first  to  control  his  own  temper,  and  next  so  to  lure  or  drive  his 
strange  sitter  as  to  manage  her  without  offending  her. 

But  to-day  the  dress  recalled  David — promised  distraction  and 
retaliation.  She  slipped  off  her  tight  gingham  with  hasty  fingers, 
and  in  a  few  seconds  she  was  transformed.  The  light  folds 
floated  about  her  as  she  walked  impetuously  up  and  down, 
studying  every  movement  in  the  glass,  intoxicated  by  the  polished 
clearness  and  whiteness  of  her  own  neck  and  shoulders,  the 
curves  of  her  own  grace  and  youth.  Many  a  night,  even  after  a 
long  sitting,  had  she  locked  her  door,  made  the  gas  flare,  and  sat 
absorbed  before  her  mirror  in  this  guise,  throwing  herself  into 
one  attitude  after  another,  naively  regretting  that  sculpture  took 
so  long,  and  that  Montjoie  could  not  fix  them  all.  The  ecstasy  of 
self-worship  in  which  the  whole  process  issued  was  but  the  fruition 
of  that  childish  habit  which  had  wrought  with  childish  things  for 
the  same  end — with  a  couple  of  rushlights,  an  old  sheet  and 
primroses  from  the  brook. 

Her  black  abundant  hair  was  still  curled  about  her  head. 
Well,  she  could  pull  it  down  in  the  studio — now  for  a  wrap — and 
then  no  noise  !  She  would  slip  downstairs  so  that  madame  should 
know  nothing  about  it.  She  was  tired  of  that  woman  always  at 
her  elbow.  Let  her  go  marketing  and  leave  other  people  in  peace. 

But  before  she  threw  on  her  wrap  she  stood  still  a  moment, 
her  nostril  quivering,  expanding,  one  hand  on  her  hip,  the  other 
swinging  her  Maenad's  tambourine.  She  knew  very  little  of  this 
sculptor-man — she  did  not  understand  him  ;  but  he  interested,  to 
some  extent  overawed,  her.  He  had  poured  out  upon  her  the 
coarsest  flatteries,  yet  she  realised  that  he  had  not  made  love  to 
her.  Perhaps  Madame  Cervin  had  been  in  the  way.  Well,  now 
for  a  surprise  and  a  tete-a-tete  !  A  dare-devil  look — her  mother's 
look — sprang  into  her  eyes. 

She  opened  the  door,  and  listened.  No  one  in  the  little 
passage,  only  a  distant  sound  of  rapid  talking,  which  suggested 
to  the  girl  that  madame  was  at  that  moment  enjoying  the  dis- 
cussion of  her  boarder's  affairs  with  monsieur,  who  was  still  in 
bed.  She  hurried  on  a  waterproof  which  covered  her  almost 


CHAP,  vii  STORM   AND  STRESS  333 

from  top  to  toe.  Then,  holding  up  her  draperies,  she  stole  out, 
and  on  to  the  public  stairs. 

They  were  deserted,  and  running  down  them  she  turned  to 
the  right  at  the  bottom  and  soon  found  herself  at  the  high  studio 
door. 

As  she  raised  her  hand  to  the  bell  she  flushed  with  passion. 

'  I'll  let  him  see  whether  I'll  go  home  whining  to  Dora,  while 
he's  amusing  himself,'  she  said  under  her  breath. 

The  door  was  opened  to  her  by  Montjoie  himself,  in  his  work- 
ing blouse,  a  cigarette  in  his  mouth.  His  hands  and  dress  were 
daubed  with  clay,  and  he  had  the  brutal  look  of  a  man  in  the 
blackest  of  tempers.  But  no  sooner  did  he  perceive  Louie  Grieve's 
stately  figure  in  the  passage  than  his  expression  changed. 

'  You — you  here  !  and  for  a  sitting  ? ' 

She  nodded,  smiling.  Her  look  had  an  excitement  which  he 
perceived  at  once.  His  eye  travelled  to  the  white  drapery  and 
the  beautiful  bare  arm  emerging  from  the  cloak  ;  then  he  looked 
behind  her  for  Madame  Cervin. 

No  one — except  this  Masnad  in  a  waterproof.  Montjoie  threw 
away  his  cigarette. 

'  Entrez,  entrez,  mademoiselle ! '  he  said,  bowing  low  to  her. 
4  When  the  heavens  are  blackest,  then  they  open.  I  was  in  a 
mind  to  wring  the  Monad's  neck  three  minutes  ago.  Come  and 
save  your  portrait ! ' 

He  led  her  in  through  the  ante-room  into  the  large  outer 
studio.  There  stood  the  Maenad  on  her  revolving  stand,  and 
there  was  the  raised  platform  for  the  model.  A  heap  of  clay  was 
to  one  side,  and  water  was  dripping  from  the  statue  on  to  the 
floor.  The  studio  light  had  a  clear  evenness  ;  and,  after  the  heat 
outside,  the  coolness  of  the  great  bare  room  was  refreshing. 

They  stood  and  looked  at  the  statue  together,  Louie  still  in  her 
cloak.  Montjoie  pointed  out  to  her  that  he  was  at  work  on  the 
shoulders  and  the  left  arm,  and  was  driven  mad  by  the  difficulties 
of  the  pose.  '  Toirnerre  de  Diet/  !  when  I  heard  you  knock,  I  felt 
like  a  murderer  ;  I  rushed  out  to  let  fly  at  someone.  And  there 
was  my  Maenad  on  the  mat  !— all  by  herself,  too,  without  that 
little  piece  of  ugliness  from  upstairs  behind  her.  I  little  thought 
this  day — this  cursed  day — was  to  turn  out  so.  I  thought  you 
were  tired  of  the  poor  sculptor — that  you  had  deserted  him  for 
good  and  all.  Ah  !  deesse — je  votis  salue  !  ' 

He  drew  back  from  her,  scanning  her  from  head  to  foot,  a  new 
tone  in  his  voice,  a  new  boldness  in  his  deep-set  eyes— eyes  which 
were  already  old.  Louie  stood  instinctively  shrinking,  yet  smil- 
ing, understanding  something  of  what  he  said,  guessing  more. 

There  was  a  bull-necked  strength  about  the  man,  with  his 
dark,  square,  weather-beaten  head,  and  black  eyebrows,  which 
made  her  afraid,  in  spite  of  the  smooth  and  deprecating  manner 
in  which  he  generally  spoke  to  women.  But  her  fear  of  him  was 
not  unpleasant  to  her.  She  liked  him  ;  she  would  have  liked 
above  all  to  quarrel  with  him  ;  she  felt  that  he  was  her  match. 


334  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

He  stepped  forward,  touched  her  arm,  and  took  a  tone  of 
command. 

'  Quick,  mademoiselle,  with  that  cloak  ! ' 

She  mounted  the  steps,  threw  off  her  cloak,  and  fell  into  her 
attitude  without  an  instant's  hesitation.  Montjoie,  putting  his 
hands  over  his  eyes  to  look  at  her,  exclaimed  under  his  breath. 

It  was  perfectly  true  that,  libertine  as  he  was,  he  had  so  far 
felt  no  inclination  whatever  to  make  love  to  the  English  girl.  Kor 
was  the  effect  merely  the  result  of  Madame  Cervin's  vigilance. 
Personally,  for  all  her  extraordinary  beauty,  his  new  model  left 
him  cold.  Originally  he  had  been  a  man  of  the  most  complex 
artistic  instincts,  the  most  delicate  and  varied  perceptions.  They 
and  his  craftsman's  skill  were  all  foundering  now  in  a  sea  of  evil 
living.  But  occasionally  they  were  active  still,  and  they  had 
served  him  for  the  instant  detection  of  that  common  egotistical 
paste  of  which  Louie  Grieve  was  made.  He  would  have  liked  to 
chain  her  to  his  model's  platform,  to  make  her  the  slave  of  his 
fevered  degenerating  art.  But  she  had  no  thrill  for  him.  While 
he  was  working  from  her  his  mind  was  often  running  on  some 
little  grisette  or  other,  who  had  not  half  Louie  Grieve's  physical 
perfection,  but  who  had  charm,  provocation,  wit — all  that  makes 
the  natural  heritage  of  the  French  woman,  of  whatever  class.  At 
the  same  time  it  had  been  an  irritation  and  an  absurdity  to  him 
that,  under  Madame  Cervin's  eye,  he  had  been  compelled  to  treat 
her  with  the  ceremonies  due  to  une  jenne  fille  honnete.  For  he 
had  at  once  detected  the  girl's  reckless  temper.  From  what  social 
stratum  did  she  come — she  and  the  brother  ?  In  her,  at  least, 
there  was  some  wild  blood  !  When  he  sounded  Madame  Cervin, 
however,  she,  with  her  incurable  habit  of  vain  mendacity,  had 
only  put  her  lodger  in  a  light  which  Montjoie  felt  certain  was  a 
false  one. 

But  this  morning  !  Never  had  she  been  so  superb,  so  inspir- 
ing !  All  the  vindictive  passion,  all  the  rage  with  David  that  was 
surging  within  her,  did  but  give  the  more  daring  and  decision 
to  her  attitude,  and  a  wilder  power  to  her  look.  Moreover,  the 
boldness  of  her  unaccompanied  visit  to  him  provoked  and 
challenged  him.  He  looked  at  her  irresolutely ;  then  with  an 
effort  he  turned  to  his  statue  and  fell  to  work.  The  touch  of  the 
clay,  the  reaction  from  past  despondency  prevailed  ;  before  half 
an  hour  was  over  he  was  more  enamoured  of  his  task  than  he  had 
ever  yet  been,  and  more  fiercely  bent  on  success.  Insensibly  as 
the  time  passed,  his  tone  with  her  became  more  and  more  short, 
brusque,  imperious.  Once  or  twice  he  made  some  rough  alteration 
in  the  pose,  with  the  overbearing  haste  of  a  man  who  can  hardly 
bear  to  leave  the  work  under  his  hands  even  for  an  instant. 
When  he  first  assumed  this  manner  Louie  opened  her  great  eyes. 
Then  it  seemed  to  please  her.  She  felt  no  regret  whatever  for  the 
smooth  voice  ;  the  more  dictatorial  he  became  the  better  she  liked 
it,  and  the  more  submissive  she  was. 

This  went  on  for  about  a  couple  of  hours — an  orgie  of  work 


CHAP,  vii  STORM  AND  STRESS  835 

on  his  side,  of  excited  persistence  on  hers.  Her  rival  in  the  clay 
grew  in  life  and  daring  under  her  eyes,  rousing  in  her,  whenever 
she  was  allowed  to  rest  a  minute  and  look,  a  new  intoxication 
with  herself.  They  hardly  talked.  He  was  too  much  absorbed 
in  what  he  was  doing ;  and  she  also  was  either  bent  upon  her 
task,  or  choked  by  wild  gusts  of  jealous  and  revengeful  thought. 
Every  now  and  then  as  she  stood  there,  in  her  attitude  of  eager 
listening,  the  wall  of  the  studio  would  fade  before  her  eyes,  and 
she  would  see  nothing  but  a  torturing  vision  of  David  at  Fontaine- 
bleau,  wrapt  up  in  'that  creature,1  and  only  remembering  his 
sister  to  rejoice  that  he  had  shaken  her  off.  Ah  !  How  could 
she  sufficiently  avenge  herself  !  how  could  she  throw  all  his 
canting  counsels  to  the  winds  with  most  emphasis  and  effect ! 

At  last  a  curious  thing  happened.  Was  it  mere  nervous 
reaction  after  such  a  strain  of  will  and  passion,  or  was  it  the  sud- 
den emergence  of  something  in  the  sister  which  was  also  common 
to  the  brother — a  certain  tragic  susceptibility,  the  capacity  for  a 
•wild  melancholy?  For,  in  an  instant,  while  she  was  thinking 
vaguely  of  Madame  Cervin  and  her  money  affairs,  despair  seized 
her — shuddering,  measureless  despair — rushing  in  upon  her,  and 
sweeping  away  everything  else  before  it.  She  tottered  under  it, 
fighting  down  the  clutch  of  it  as  long  as  she  could.  It  had  no 
words,  it  was  like  a  physical  agony.  All  that  was  clear  to  her  for 
one  lurid  moment  was  that  she  would  like  to  kill  herself. 

The  studio  swam  before  her,  and  she  dropped  into  the  chair 
behind  her. 

Montjoie  gave  a  protesting  cry. 

'  Twenty  minutes  more  ! — Courage  /' 

Then,  as  she  made  no  answer,  he  went  up  to  her  and  put  a 
violent  hand  on  her  shoulder — beside  himself. 

'  You  shall  not  be  tired,  I  tell  you.     Look  up  !  look  at  me  ! ' 

Under  the  stimulus  of  his  master's  tone  she  slowly  recovered 
herself — her  great  black  eyes  lifted.  He  gazed  into  them  steadily; 
his  voice  sank. 

'You  belong  to  me,'  he  said  with  breathless  rapidity.  'Do 
you  understand  ?  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ?  What  are  those 
tears?' 

A  cry  of  nature  broke  from  her. 

'  My  brother  has  left  me— with  that  girl ! ' 

She  breathed  out  the  words  into  the  ears  of  the  man  stooping 
towards  her.  His  great  brow  lifted — he  gave  a  little  laugh. 
Then  eagerly,  triumphantly,  he  seized  her  again  by  the  arms. 
'  A  la  bonne  hen  re  !  Then  it  is  plainer  still.  You  belong  to  me 
and  I  to  you.  In  that  statue  we  live  and  die  together.  Another 
hour,  and  it  will  be  a  masterpiece.  Come  !  one  more  ! ' 

She  drank  in  his  tone  of  mad  excitement  as  though  it  were 
wine,  and  it  revived  her.  The  strange  grip  upon  her  heart  re- 
laxed ;  the  nightmare  was  dashed  aside.  Her  colour  came  back, 
and,  pushing  him  proudly  away  from  her,  she  resumed  her  pose 
without  a  word. 


336  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 


CHAPTER  VIII 

*  Do  you  know,  sir,  that  that  good  woman  has  brought  in  the 
soup  for  the  second  time  ?  I  can  see  her  fidgeting  about  the  table 
through  the  window.  If  we  go  on  like  this,  she  will  depart  and 
leave  us  to  wait  on  ourselves.  Then  see  if  you  get  any  soup  out 
of  me.1 

David,  for  all  answer,  put  his  arm  close  round  the  speaker. 
She  threw  herself  back  against  him,  smiling  into  his  face.  But 
neither  could  see  the  other,  for  it  was  nearly  dark,  and  through 
the  acacia  trees  above  them  the  stars  glimmered  in  the  warm  sky. 
To  their  left,  across  a  small  grass-plat,  was  a  tiny  thatched  house,, 
buried  under  a  great  vine  which  embowered  it  all  from  top  to 
base,  and  overhung  by  trees  which  drooped  on  to  the  roof,  and 
swept  the  windows  with  their  branches.  Through  a  lower  window, 
opening  on  to  the  gravel  path,  could  be  seen  a  small  bare  room, 
with  a  paper  of  coarse  brown  and  blue  pattern,  brightly  illumi- 
nated by  a  paraffin  lamp,  which  also  threw  a  square  of  light  far 
out  into  the  garden.  The  lamp  stood  on  a  table  which  was  spread 
for  a  meal,  and  a  stout  woman,  in  a  white  cap  and  blue  cotton 
apron,  could  be  seen  moving  beside  it. 

'  Come  in  ! '  said  Elise,  springing  to  her  feet,  and  laying  a 
compelling  hand  on  her  companion.  '  Get  it  over  !  The  moon 
is  waiting  for  us  out  there  ! ' 

And  she  pointed  to  where,  beyond  the  roofs  of  the  neighbour- 
ing houses,  rose  the  dark  fringe  of  trees  which  marked  the  edge 
of  the  forest. 

They  went  in,  hand  in  hand,  and  sat  opposite  each  other  at 
the  little  rickety  table,  while  the  peasant  woman  from  whom  they 
had  taken  the  house  waited  upon  them.  The  day  before,  after 
looking  at  the  auberge,  and  finding  it  full  of  artists  come  down 
to  look  for  spring  subjects  in  the  forest,  they  had  wandered  on 
searching  for  something  less  public,  more  poetical.  And  they 
had  stumbled  upon  this  tiny  overgrown  house  in  its  tangled 
garden.  The  woman  to  whom  it  belonged  had  let  it  for  the 
season,  but  till  the  beginning  of  her  '  let '  there  was  a  month  ; 
and,  after  much  persuasion,  she  had  consented  to  allow  the 
strangers  to  hire  it  and  her  services  as  bonne,  by  the  week,  for  a 
sum  more  congruous  with  the  old  and  primitive  days  of  Barbizon 
than  with  the  later  claims  of  the  little  place  to  fashion  and  fame. 
As  the  lovers  stood  together  in  the  salon,  exclaiming  with  delight 
at  its  bare  floor,  its  low  ceiling,  its  old  bureau,  its  hard  sofa  with 
the  Empire  legs,  and  the  dilapidated  sphinxes  on  the  arms,  the 
owner  of  the  house  looked  them  up  and  down,  from  the  door, 
with  comprehending  eyes.  Barbizon  had  known  adventures  like 
this  before  ! 

But  she  might  think  what  she  liked ;  it  mattered  nothing  to 
her  lodgers.  To  'a  pair  of  romantics  out  of  date,'  the  queer 
overgrown  place  she  owned  was  perfection,  and  they  took  pos- 


CHAP,  viii  STORM  AND  STRESS  337 

session  of  it  in  a  dream  of  excitement  and  joy.  From  the  top 
loft,  still  bare  and  echoing,  where  the  highly  respectable  summer 
tenants  were  to  put  up  the  cots  of  their  children,  to  the  outside 
den  which  served  for  a  kitchen,  whence  a  wooden  ladder  led  to  a 
recess  among  the  rafters,  occupied  by  Madame  Pyat  as  a  bed- 
room ;  from  the  masses  of  Virginia  creeper  on  the  thatched  roof 
to  the  thicket  of  acacias  and  roses  on  the  front  grass-plat,  and 
the  high  flowery  wall  which  shut  them  off  from  the  curious  eyes 
of  the  street,  it  was  all,  in  the  lovers'  feeling,  the  predestined 
setting  for  such  an  idyll  as  theirs. 

And  if  this  was  so  in  the  hot  mornings  and  afternoons,  how 
much  more  in  the  heavenly  evenings  and  nights,  when  the  forest 
lay  whispering  and  murmuring  under  the  moonlight,  and  they, 
wandering  together  arm  in  arm  under  the  gaunt  and  twisted 
oaks  of  the  Bas  Bre"au,  or  among  the  limestone  blocks  which  strew 
the  heights  of  this  strange  woodland,  felt  themselves  part  of  the 
world  about  them,  dissolved  into  its  quivering  harmonious  life, 
shades  among  its  shadows  ! 

On  this  particular  evening,  after  the  hurried  and  homely 
meal,  David  brought  Elise's  large  black  hat,  and  the  lace  scarf 
which  had  bewitched  him  at  St.  Germain — oh,  the  joy  of  hand- 
ling such  things  in  this  familiar,  sacrilegious  way  ! — and  they 
strolled  out  into  the  long  uneven  street  beyond  their  garden  wall, 
on  their  way  to  the  forest.  The  old  inn  to  the  left  was  in  a 
clatter.  Two  diligences  had  just  arrived,  and  the  horses  were 
drooping  and  panting  at  the  door.  A  maidservant  was  lighting 
guests  across  the  belittered  courtyard  with  a  flaring  candle. 
There  was  a  red  glimpse  of  the  kitchen  with  its  brass  and  copper 
pans,  and  on  the  bench  outside  the  gateway  sat  a  silent  trio  of 
artists,  who  had  worked  well  and  dined  abundantly,  and  were 
now  enjoying  their  last  smoke  before  the  sleep,  to  which  they 
were  already  nodding,  should  overtake  them.  The  two  lovers 
stepped  quickly  past,  making  with  all  haste  for  that  leafy  mystery 
beyond  cleft  by  the  retreating  whiteness  of  the  Fontainebleau 
road — into  which  the  village  melted  on  either  side. 

Such  moonlight !  All  the  tones  of  the  street,  its  white  and 
greys,  the  reddish  brown  of  the  roofs,  were  to  be  discerned  under 
it ;  and  outside  in  the  forest  it  was  a  phantasmagoria,  an  intoxi- 
cation. The  little  paths  they  were  soon  threading,  pnths  strewn 
with  limestone  dust,  wound  like  white  threads  among  the  rocks 
and  through  the  blackness  of  the  firs.  They  climbed  them  hand 
in  hand,  and  soon  they  were  on  a  height  looking  over  a  great 
hollow  of  the  forest  to  the  plain  beyond,  as  it  were  a  vast  cup 
overflowing  with  moonlight  and  melting  into  a  silver  sky.  The 
width  of  the  heavens,  the  dim  immensity  of  the  earth,  drove  them 
close  together  in  a  delicious  silence.  The  girl  put  the  warmth  of 
her  lover's  arm  between  her  and  the  overpowering  greatness  of  a 
too  august  nature.  The  man,  on  the  other  hand,  rising  in  this  to 
that  higher  stature  which  was  truly  his,  felt  himself  carried  out 
into  nature  on  the  wave  of  his  own  boundless  emotion.  That 


338  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

cold  Deism  he  had  held  so  loosely  broke  into  passion.  The 
humblest  phrases  of  worship,  of  entreaty,  swept  across  the  brain. 

'  Could  one  ever  have  guessed,'  he  asked  her,  his  words 
stumbling  and  broken,  '  that  such  happiness  was  possible  ? ' 

She  shook  her  head,  smiling  at  him. 

'  Yes,  certainly  ! — if  one  has  read  poems  and  novels.  Noth- 
ing to  me  is  ever  more  than  I  expect, — generally  less.' 

Then  she  broke  off  hesitating,  and  hid  her  face  against  his 
breast.  A  pang  smote  him.  He  cried  out  in  the  old  common- 
places that  he  was  not  worthy,  that  she  must  tire  of  him,  that 
there  was  nothing  in  him  to  hold,  to  satisfy  her. 

'And  three  weeks  ago,'  she  said,  interrupting  him,  'we  had 
never  heard  each  other's  names.  Strange — life  is  strange  ! 
"Well,  now,'  and  she  quickly  drew  herself  away  from  him,  and 
holding  him  by  both  hands  lightly  swung  his  arms  backwards 
and  forwards,  'this  can't  last  for  ever,  you  know.  In  the  first 
place — we  shall  die:"1  and  throwing  herself  back,  she  pulled 
against  him  childishly,  a  spray  of  ivy  he  had  wound  round  her 
hat  drooping  with  fantastic  shadows  over  her  face  and  neck. 

'Do  you  know  what  you  are  like?'  he  asked  her,  evading 
what  she  had  said,  while  his  eyes  devoured  her. 

'No!' 

'You  are  like  that  picture  in  the  Louvre, — Da  Vinci's  St. 
John,  that  you  say  should  be  a  Bacchus. ' 

'Which  means  that  you  find  me  a  queer, — heathenish, — sort 
of  creature  ? '  she  said,  still  laughing  and  swaying.  '  So  I  am. 
Take  care !  Well  now,  a  truce  to  love-making  !  I  am  tired  of 
being  meek  and  charming — this  night  excites  me.  Come  and 
see  the  oaks  in  the  Bas  Breau.' 

And  running  down  the  rocky  path  before  them  she  led  him 
in  and  out  through  twisted  leafy  ways,  till  at  last  they  stood 
among  the  blasted  giants  of  the  forest,  the  oaks  of  the  Bas 
Br6au.  In  the  emboldening  daylight,  David,  with  certain 
English  wood  scenes  in  his  mind,  would  swear  the  famous 
trees  of  Fontainebleau  had  neither  size  nor  age  to  speak  of. 
But  at  night  they  laid  their  avenging  spell  upon  him.  They 
stood  so  finely  on  the  broken  ground,  each  of  them  with  a  kingly 
space  about  him  ;  there  was  so  wild  a  fantasy  in  their  gnarled 
and  broken  limbs  ;  and  under  the  night  their  scanty  crowns  of 
leaf,  from  which  the  sap  was  yearly  ebbing,  had  so  lofty  a 
remoteness. 

They  found  a  rocky  seat  in  front  of  a  certain  leafless  monster, 
which  had  been  struck  by  lightning  in  a  winter  storm  years 
before,  and  rent  from  top  to  bottom.  The  bare  trunk  with  its 
torn  branches  yawning  stood  out  against  the  rest,  a  black  and 
melancholy  shape,  preaching  desolation.  But  Elise  studied  it 
coolly. 

'  I  know  that  tree  by  heart,'  she  declared.  '  Corot,  Rousseau, 
Diaz — it  has  served  them  all.  I  could  draw  it  with  my  eyes 
shut' 


CHAP,  vm  STORM  AND   STRESS  339 

Then  with  the  mention  of  drawing  she  began  to  twist  her 
fingers  restlessly. 

'I  wonder  what  the  concours  was  to-day,'  she  said.  'Now 
that  I  am  away  that  Bre"al  girl  will  carry  off  everything.  There 
will  be  no  bearing  her — she  was  never  second  till  I  came.' 

David  took  a  very  scornful  view  of  this  contingency.  'When 
you  go  back  you  will  beat  them  all  again  ;  let  them  have  their 
few  weeks'  respite  !  You  told  me  yesterday  you  had  forgotten 
the  atelier.'' 

'  Did  I  ? '  she  said  with  a  strange  little  sigh.  '  It  wasn't  true 
— I  haven't.' 

With  a  sudden  whim  she  pulled  off  his  broad  hat  and  threw 
it  down.  Reaching  forward  she  took  his  head  between  her 
hands,  and  arranged  his  black  curls  about  his  brow  in  a  way  to 
suit  her.  Then,  still  holding  him,  she  drew  back  with  her  head 
on  one  side  to  look  at  him.  The  moon  above  them,  now  at  its 
full  zenith  of  brightness,  threw  the  whole  massive  face  into 
strong  relief,  and  her  own  look  melted  into  delight. 

'There  is  no  model  in  Paris,'  she  declared,  'with  so  fine  a 
head.'  Then  with  another  sigh  she  dropped  her  hold,  and 
propping  her  chin  on  her  hands,  she  stared  straight  before  her 
in  silence. 

'Do  you  imagine  you  are  the  first  ?'  she  asked  him  presently, 
with  a  queer  abruptness. 

There  was  a  pause. 

'You  told  me  so,'  he  said,  at  last,  his  voice  quivering; 
'  don't  deceive  me — there  is  no  fun  in  it — I  believe  it  all ! ' 

She  laughed,  and  did  not  answer  for  a  moment.  He  put  out 
his  covetous  arms  and  would  have  drawn  her  to  him,  but  she 
withdrew  herself. 

'  What  did  I  tell  you  ?  I  don't  remember.  In  the  first  place 
there  was  a  cousin — there  is  always  a  cousin  ! ' 

He  stared  at  her,  his  face  flushing,  and  asked  her  slowly 
what  she  meant. 

'  You  have  seen  his  portrait  in  my  room,'  she  said  coolly. 

He  racked  his  brains. 

'  Oh  !  that  portrait  on  the  wall,'  he  burst  out  at  last,  in  vain 
trying  for  a  tone  as  self-possessed  as  her  own,  '  that  man  with  a 
short  beard  ? ' 

She  nodded. 

'  Oh,  he  is  not  bad  at  all,  my  cousin.  He  is  the  son  of  that 
uncle  and  aunt  I  told  you  of.  Only  while  they  were  rusting  in 
the  Gironde,  he  was  at  Paris  learning  to  be  a  doctor,  and  enlarging 
his  mind  by  coming  to  see  me  every  week.  When  they  came  up 
to  town  to  put  in  a  claim  to  me,  they  thought  me  a  lump  of 
wickedness,  as  I  told  you  ;  I  made  their  hair  stand  on  end.  But 
Guillaume  knew  a  good  deal  more  about  me ;  and  he  was  not 
scandalised  at  all ;  oh  dear,  no.  He  used  to  come  every  Saturday 
and  sit  in  a  corner  while  I  painted — a  long  lanky  creature, 
rather  good  looking,  but  with  spectacles — he  has  ruined  his  eyes 


340  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

/ 

with  reading.  Oh,  he  would  have  married  me  any  day,  and  let 
his  relations  shriek  as  they  please  ;  so  don't  suppose,  Monsieur 
David,  that  I  have  had  no  chances  of  respectability,  or  that  my 
life  began  with  you  ! '  She  threw  him  a  curious  look. 

'Why  do  you  talk  about  him?'  cried  David,  beside  himself. 
*  "What  is  your  cousin  to  either  of  us  ? ' 

'  I  shall  talk  of  what  I  like,'  she  said  wilfully,  clasping  her 
hands  round  her  knees  with  the  gesture  of  an  obstinate 
child. 

David  stared  away  into  the  black  shadow  of  the  oaks,  marvel- 
ling at  himself — at  the  strength  of  that  sudden  smart  within 
him,  that  half-frenzied  restlessness  and  dread  which  some  of  her 
lightest  sayings  had  the  power  to  awaken  in  him. 

Then  he  repented  him,  and  turning,  bent  his  head  over  the 
little  hands  and  kissed  them  passionately.  She  did  not  move  or 
speak.  He  came  close  to  her,  trying  to  decipher  her  face  in  the 
moonlight.  For  the  first  time  since  that  night  in  the  studio  there 
was  a  film  of  sudden  tears  in  the  wide  grey  eyes.  He  caught  her 
in  his  arms  and  demanded  why. 

'  You  quarrel  with  me  and  dictate  to  me,'  she  cried,  wrestling 
with  herself,  choked  by  some  inexplicable  emotion,  '  when  I  have 
given  you  everything — when  I  am  alone  in  the  world  with  you — 
at  your  mercy — I  who  have  been  so  proud,  have  held  my  head  so 
high  ! ' 

He  bent  over  her,  pouring  into  her  ear  all  the  words  that 
passion  could  find  or  forge.  Her  sudden  attack  upon  him,  poor 
fellow,  seemed  to  him  neither  unjust  nor  extravagant.  She  had 
given  him  everything,  and  who  and  what  was  he  that  she  should 
have  thrown  him  so  much  as  a  look  ! 

Gradually  her  mysterious  irritation  died  away.  The  gentleness 
of  the  summer  night,  the  serenity  of  the  moonlight,  the  sea-like 
murmur  of  the  forest — these  things  sank  little  by  little  into  their 
hearts,  and  in  the  calm  they  made,  youth  and  love  spoke  again — 
siren  voices  ! — with  the  old  magic.  And  when  at  last  they  loi- 
tered home,  they  moved  in  a  trance  of  feeling  which  wanted  no 
words.  The  moon  dropped  slowly  into  the  western  trees  ;  mid- 
night chimes  came  to  them  from  the  villages  which  ring  the 
forest ;  and  a  playing  wind  sprang  up  about  them,  cooling  the 
girl's  hot  cheeks,  and  freshening  the  verdurous  ways  through 
which  they  passed. 

But  in  the  years  which  came  after,  whenever  David  allowed 
his  mind  to  dwell  for  a  short  shuddering  instant  on  these  days  at 
Fontainebleau,  it  often  occurred  to  him  to  wonder  whether  during 
their  wild  dream  he  had  ever  for  one  hour  been  truly  happy. 
At  the  height  of  their  passion  had  there  been  any  of  that  exqui- 
site give  and  take  between  them  which  may  mark  the  simplest 
love  of  the  rudest  lovers,  but  which  is  in  its  essence  moral,  a 
thing  not  of  the  senses  but  of  the  soul  ?  There  is  nothing  else 
which  is  vital  to  love.  Without  it  passion  dies  into  space  like 


CHAP,  vin  STORM   AND  STRESS  341 

the  flaming  corona  of  the  sun.  With  it,  the  humblest  hearts  may 
'  bear  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom.' 

There  can  be  no  question  that  after  the  storm  of  feeling,  ex- 
citement, pity,  which  had  swept  her  into  his  arms,  he  gained 
upon  her  vagrant  fancy  for  a  time  day  by  day.  Seen  close,  his 
social  simplicity,  his  delicately  tempered  youth  had  the  effect  of 
great  refinement.  He  had  in  him  much  of  the  peasant  nature, 
but  so  modified  by  fine  perception  and  wide-ranging  emotion, 
that  what  had  been  coarseness  in  his  ancestors  was  in  him  only 
a  certain  rich  savour  and  fulness  of  being.  His  mere  sympathetic, 
sensitive  instinct  had  developed  in  him  all  the  essentials  of  good 
manners,  and  books,  poetry,  observation  had  done  the  rest. 

So  that  in  the  little  matters  of  daily  contact  he  touched  and 
charmed  her  unexpectedly.  He  threw  no  veil  whatever  over  his 
tradesman's  circumstances,  and  enjoyed  trying  to  make  her 
understand  what  had  been  the  conditions  and  prospects  of  his 
Manchester  life.  He  had  always,  indeed,  conceived  his  book- 
seller's profession  with  a  certain  dignity  ;  and  he  was  secretly 
proud,  with  a  natural  conceit,  of  the  efforts  and  ability  which  had 
brought  him  so  rapidly  to  the  front.  How  oddly  the  Manchester 
names  and  facts  sounded  in  the  forest  air  !  She  would  sit  with 
her  little  head  on  one  side  listening  ;  but  privately  he  suspected 
that  she  understood  very  little  of  it  ;  that  she  accepted  him  and 
his  resources  very  much  in  the  vague  with  the  insouciance  of 
Bohemia. 

He  himself,  however,  was  by  no  means  without  plans  for  the 
future.  In  the  first  flush  of  his  triumphant  passion  he  had  won 
from  her  the  promise  of  a  month  alone  with  him,  in  or  near 
Fontainebleau — her  own  suggestion — after  which  she  was  to  go 
back  in  earnest  to  her  painting,  and  he  was  to  return  to  Man- 
chester and  make  arrangements  for  their  future  life  together. 
Louie  must  be  provided  for,  and  after  that  his  ideas  about  him- 
self were  already  tolerably  clear.  In  one  of  his  free  intervals, 
during  his  first  days  in  Paris,  he  had  had  a  long  conversation 
one  evening  with  the  owner  of  an  important  bookshop  on  the 
Quai  St. -Michel.  The  man  badly  wanted  an  English  clerk  with 
English  connections.  David  made  certain  of  the  opening,  should 
he  choose  to  apply  for  it.  And  if  not  there,  then  somewhere 
else.  With  the  consciousness  of  capital,  experience,  and  brains, 
to  justify  him,  he  had  no  fears.  Meanwhile,  John  should  keep 
on  the  Manchester  shop,  and  he,  David,  would  go  over  two  or 
three  times  a  year  to  stock-take  and  make  up  accounts.  John, 
was  as  honest  as  the  day,  and  had  already  learnt  much. 

But  although  his  old  self  had  so  far  reasserted  itself; 
although  the  contriving  activity  of  the  brain  was  all  still  there, 
ready  to  be  brought  to  bear  on  this  new  life  when  it  was 
wanted  ;  Elise  could  never  mistake  him,  or  the  true  character  of 
this  crisis  of  his  youth.  The  self-surrender  of  passion  had  trans- 
formed, developed  him  to  an  amazing  extent,  and  it  found  its 
natural  language.  As  she  grew  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  boy's 


343  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

heart,  and  as  the  cloud  of  diffidence  which  had  enwrapped  him 
since  he  came  to  Paris  gave  way,  so  that  even  in  this  brilliant 
France  he  ventured  at  last  to  express  his  feelings  and  ideas,  the 
poet  and  thinker  in  him  grew  before  her  eyes.  She  felt  a  new 
consideration,  a  new  intellectual  respect  for  him. 

But  above  all  his  tenderness,  his  womanish  consideration  and 
sweetness  amazed  her.  She  had  been  hotly  wooed  now  and  then, 
but  with  no  one,  not  even  '  the  cousin,'  had  she  ever  been  on 
terms  of  real  intimacy.  And  for  the  rest  she  had  lived  a  rough- 
and-tumble,  independent  life,  defending  herself  first  of  all 
against  the  big  boys  of  the  farm,  then  against  her  father,  or  her 
comrades  in  the  atelier,  or  her  Bohemian  suitors.  The  ingenuity 
of  service  David  showed  in  shielding  and  waiting  upon  her  bewil- 
dered her — had,  for  a  time,  a  profound  effect  upon  her. 

And  yet  ! — all  the  while — what  jars  and  terrors  from  the  very 
beginning  !  He  seemed  often  to  be  groping  in  the  dark  with  her. 
"Whole  tracts  of  her  thought  and  experience  were  mysteries  to 
him,  and  grew  but  little  plainer  with  their  new  relation.  Little 
as  he  knew  or  would  have  admitted  it,  the  gulf  of  nationality 
yawned  deep  between  them.  And  those  artistic  ambitions  of 
hers — as  soon  as  they  re-emerged  on  the  other  side  of  the  first 
intoxication  of  passion — they  were  as  much  of  a  jealousy  and  a 
dread  to  him  as  before.  His  soul  was  as  alive  as  it  had  ever 
been  to  the  threat  and  peril  of  them. 

Their  relation  itself,  too — to  her,  perhaps,  secretly  a  guarantee 
— was  to  him  a  perpetual  restlessness.  Uunion  libre  as  the 
French  artist  understands  it  was  not  in  his  social  tradition,  what- 
ever might  be  his  literary  assimilation  of  French  ideas.  He 
might  passionately  adopt  and  defend  it,  because  it  was  her  will ; 
none  the  less  was  he,  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart,  both  ashamed 
and  afraid  because  of  it.  From  the  very  beginning  he  had  let 
her  know  that  she  had  only  to  say  the  word  and  he  was  ready  to 
marry  her  instantly.  But  she  put  him  aside  with  an  impatient 
wave  of  her  little  hand,  a  nervous,  defiant  look  in  her  grey  eyes. 
Yet  one  day,  when  in  the  little  village  shop  of  Barbizon,  a  woman 
standing  beside  Elise  at  the  counter  looked  her  insolently  over 
from  head  to  foot,  and  took  no  notice  of  a  question  addressed  to 
her  on  the  subject  of  one  of  the  forest  routes,  the  girl  felt  an 
unexpected  pang  of  resentment  and  shame. 

One  afternoon,  in  a  lonely  part  of  the  forest,  she  strained  her 
foot  by  treading  on  a  loose  stone  among  the  rocks.  Tired  with 
long  rambling  and  jarred  by  the  shock  she  sank  down,  looking 
white  and  ready  to  cry.  Pain  generally  crushed  and  demoralised 
her.  She  was  capable,  indeed,  of  setting  the  body  at  defiance  on 
occasion ;  but,  as  a  rule,  she  had  no  physical  fortitude,  and  did 
not  pretend  to  it. 

David  was  much  perplexed.  So  far  as  he  knew,  they  were 
not  near  any  of  the  huts  which  are  dotted  over  the  forest  and 


CHAP,  vin  STORM  AND  STRESS  343 

provide  the  tourist  with  consommations  and  carved  articles. 
There  was  no  water  wherewith  to  revive  her  or  to  bandage  the 
foot,  for  Fontainebleau  has  no  streams.  All  he  could  do  was  to 
carry  her.  And  this  he  did,  with  the  utmost  skill,  and  with  a 
leaping  thrill  of  tenderness  which  made  itself  felt  by  the  little 
elfish  creature  in  the  clasp  of  his  arms,  and  in  the  happy  leaning 
of  his  dark  cheek  to  hers,  as  she  held  him  round  the  neck. 

'Paul  and  Virginia  !'  she  said  to  him,  laughing.  "  He  bore 
her  in  his  arms !  " — all  heroes  do  it — in  reality,  most  women 
would  break  the  hero's  back.  '  Confess  I  am  even  lighter  than 
you  thought ! ' 

'  As  light  as  Venus'  doves,'  he  swore  to  her.  '  Bid  me  carry 
you  to  Paris  and  see.' 

'  Paris  ! '  At  the  mention  of  it  she  fell  silent,  and  the  corners 
of  her  mouth  drooped  into  gravity.  But  he  strode  happily  on, 
perceiving  nothing. 

Then  when  they  got  home,  she  limping  through  the  village, 
he  put  on  the  airs  of  a  surgeon,  ran  across  to  the  grocer,  who 
kept  a  tiny  pharmacie  in  one  corner  of  his  miscellaneous  shop, 
and  conferred  with  him  to  such  effect  that  the  injured  limb  was 
soon  lotioned  and  bandaged  in  a  manner  which  made  David  inor- 
dinately proud  of  himself.  Once,  as  he  was  examining  his  handi- 
work, it  occurred  to  him  that  it  was  Mr.  Ancrum  who  had  taught 
him  to  use  his  fingers  neatly.  Mr.  Ancrum  !  At  the  thought  of 
his  name  the  young  man  felt  an  inward  shrinking,  as  though 
from  contact  with  a  cold  and  alien  order  of  things.  How  hard 
to  realise,  indeed,  that  the  same  world  contained  Manchester  with 
its  factories  and  chapels,  and  this  perfumed  forest,  this  little 
overgrown  house  ! 

Afterwards,  as  he  sat  beside  her,  reading,  as  quiet  as  a 
mouse,  so  that  she  might  sleep  if  tho  tumble-down  Empire  sofa 
did  but  woo  her  that  way,  she  suddenly  put  up  her  arm  and  drew 
him  down  to  her. 

'  Who  taught  you  all  this — this  tenderness  ?'  she  said  to  him, 
in  a  curious  wistful  tone,  as  though  her  question  were  the  out- 
come of  a  long  reverie.  '  Was  it  your  mother  ? ' 

David  started.  He  had  never  spoken  to  her  or  to  anyone  of 
his  mother,  and  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  do  so  now. 

'  My  mother  died  when  I  was  five  years  old,'  he  said  reluc- 
tantly. '  Why  don't  you  go  to  sleep,  little  restless  thing  ?  Is  the 
bandage  right  ? ' 

'Quite.  I  can  imagine,'  she  said  presently  in  a  low  tone, 
letting  him  go,  '  I  can  imagine  one  might  grow  so  dependent  on 
all  this  cherishing,  so  horribly  dependent ! ' 

'  Well,  and  why  not  ? '  he  said,  taking  up  her  hand  and  kissing 
it.  '  What  are  we  made  for,  but  to  be  your  bondslaves  ? ' 

She  drew  her  hand  away,  and  let  it  fall  beside  her  with  an 
impatient  sigh.  The  poor  boy  looked  at  her  with  frightened  eyes. 
Then  some  quick  instinct  came  to  the  rescue,  and  his  expression 
changed  completely. 


344  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

'I  have  thought  it  all  out,'  he  began,  speaking  with  a  brisk, 
business-like  air,  '  what  I  shall  do  at  Manchester,  and  when  I  get 
back  here.' 

And  he  hung  over  her,  chattering  and  laughing  about  his 
plans.  What  did  she  say  to  a  garret  and  a  studio  somewhere 
near  the  Quai  St. -Michel,  in  the  Quartier  Latin,  rooms  whence 
they  might  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  Seine  and  Notre-Dame,  where 
she  would  be  within  easy  reach  of  Taranne's  studio,  and  the 
Luxembourg,  and  the  Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts,  and  the  Louvre, 
rooms  where  after  their  day's  work  they  might  meet,  shut  out 
the  world  and  let  in  heaven — a  home  consecrate  at  once  to  art 
and  love  ? 

The  quick  bright  words  flowed  without  a  check  ;  his  eye 
shone  as  though  it  caught  the  light  of  the  future.  But  she  lay 
turned  away  from  him,  silent,  till  at  last  she  stopped  him  with  a 
restless  gesture. 

'  Don't — don't  talk  like  that !  As  soon  as  one  dares  to  reckon 
on  Him — le  bon  Dieu  strikes — just  to  let  one  know  one's  place. 
And  don't  drive  me  mad  about  my  art !  You  saw  me  try  to 
draw  this  morning ;  you  might  be  quiet  about  it,  I  think,  par 
pitie  !  If  I  ever  had  any  talent — which  is  not  likely,  or  I  should 
have  had  some  notices  of  my  pictures  by  this  time — it  is  all  dead 
and  done  for.' 

And  turning  quite  away  from  him,  she  buried  her  face  in  the 
cushion. 

'  Look  here,'  he  said  to  her,  smiling  and  stooping,  '  shall  I 
tell  you  something  ?  I  forgot  it  till  now.' 

She  shook  her  head,  but  he  went  on  : 

'  You  remember  this  morning  while  I  was  waiting  for  you, 
I  went  into  the  inn  to  ask  about  the  way  to  the  Gorges 
d'Affremont.  I  had  your  painting  things  with  me.  I  didn't 
know  whether  you  wanted  them  or  not,  and  I  laid  them  down  on 
the  table  in  the  cour,  while  I  went  in  to  speak  to  madame. 
Well,  when  I  came  out,  there  were  a  couple  of  artists  there, 
those  men  who  have  been  here  all  the  time  painting,  and  they 
had  undone  the  strap  and  were  looking  at  the  sketch — you  know, 
that  bit  of  beechwood  with  the  rain  coming  on.  I  rushed  at 
them.  But  they  only  grinned,  and  one  of  them,  the  young  man 
with  the  fair  moustache,  sent  you  his  compliments.  You  must 
have,  he  said,  "  very  remarkable  dispositions  indeed."  Perhaps 
I  looked  as  if  I  knew  that  before  !  Whose  pupil  were  you  ?  1 
told  him,  and  he  said  I  was  to  tell  you  to  stick  to  Taranne.  You 
were  one  of  the  peintres  de  temperament,  and  it  was  they 
especially  who  must  learn  their  grammar,  and  learn  it  from  the 
classics  ;  and  the  other  man,  the  old  bear  who  never  speaks  to 
anybody,  nodded  and  looked  at  the  sketch  again,  and  said  it  was 
"amusing — not  bad  at  all,"  and  you  might  make  something  of 
it  for  the  next  Salon.' 

Cunning  David  I  By  this  time  Elise  had  her  arm  round  his 
neck,  and  was  devouring  his  face  with  her  keen  eyes.  Every- 


CHAP,  vili  STORM  AND  STRESS  345 

thing  was  shaken  off — the  pain  of  her  foot,  melancholy,  fatigue 
— and  all  the  horizons  of  the  soul  were  bright  again;  She  had  a 
new  idea  ! — what  if  she  were  to  combine  his  portrait  with  the 
beechwood  sketch,  and  make  something  large  and  important  of 
it  ?  He  had  the  head  of  a  poet — the  forest  was  in  its  most 
poetical  moment.  Why  not  pose  him  at  the  foot  of  the  great 
beech  to  the  left,  give  him  a  book  dropping  from  his  hand,  and 
call  it  '  Reverie '  ? 

For  the  rest  of  the  day  she  talked  or  sketched  incessantly. 
She  would  hardly  be  persuaded  to  give  her  bandaged  foot  the 
afternoon's  rest,  and  by  eight  o'clock  next  morning  they  were 
off  to  the  forest,  she  limping  along  with  a  stick. 

Two  or  three  days  of  perfect  bliss  followed.  The  picture 
promised  excellently.  Elise  was  in  the  most  hopeful  mood,  alert 
and  merry  as  a  bird.  And  when  they  were  driven  home  by 
hunger,  the  work  still  went  on.  For  they  had  turned  their  top 
attic  into  a  studio,  and  here  as  long  as  the  light  lasted  she  toiled 
on,  wrestling  with  the  head  and  the  difficulties  of  the  figure.  But 
she  was  determined  to  make  it  substantially  a  picture  en  plein 
air.  Her  mind  was  full  of  all  the  daring  conceptions  and  ideals 
which  were  then  emerging  in  art,  as  in  literature,  from  the 
decline  of  Romanticism.  The  passion  for  light,  for  truth,  was, 
she  declared,  penetrating,  and  revolutionising  the  whole  artistic 
world.  Delacroix  had  a  studio  to  the  south ;  she  also  would 
4  bedare  the  sun.' 

At  the  end  of  the  third  day  she  threw  herself  on  him  in  a 
passion  of  gratitude  and  delight,  lifting  her  soft  mouth  to  be 
kissed. 

'  Enibrasse-moi !  Embrasse-moi  !  Blague  a  part,—je  com- 
mence a  me  sentir  artiste  ! ' 

And  they  wandered  about  their  little  garden  till  past  mid- 
night, hand  close  in  hand.  She  could  talk  of  nothing  but  her 
picture,  arid  he,  feeling  himself  doubly  necessary  and  delightful 
to  her,  overflowed  with  happiness  and  praise. 

But  next  day  things  went  less  well.  She  was  torn,  over- 
come by  the  difficulties  of  her  task.  Working  now  in  the  forest, 
now  at  home,  the  lights  and  values  had  suffered.  The  general 
tone  had  neither  an  indoor  nor  an  outdoor  truth.  She  must 
repaint  certain  parts,  work  only  out  of  doors.  Then  all  the 
torments  of  the  outdoor  painter  began  :  wind,  which  put  her  in 
a  nervous  fever,  and  rain,  which,  after  the  long  spell  of  fine 
weather,  began  to  come  down  on  them,  and  drive  them  into 
shelter. 

Soon  she  was  in  despair.  She  had  been  too  ambitious.  The 
landscape  should  have  been  the  principal  thing,  the  figure  only 
indicated,  a  suggestion  in  the  middle  distance.  She  had  carried 
it  too  far  ;  it  fought  with  its  surroundings  ;  the  picture  had  no 
unity,  no  repose.  Oh,  for  some  advice  !  How  could  one  pull 
such  a  thing  through  without  help?  In  three  minutes  Taranne 
would  tell  her  what  was  n-ronj;. 


346  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

In  twenty-four  hours  more  she  had  fretted  herself  ill.  The 
picture  was  there  in  the  corner,  turned  to  the  wall ;  he  could  only 
just  prevent  her  from  driving  her  palette-knife  through  it.  And 
she  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of  the  sofa,  silent,  a  book  on  her 
knee,  her  hands  hanging  beside  her,  and  her  feverish  eyes  wan- 
dering— wandering  round  the  room,  if  only  they  might  escape 
from  David,  might  avoid  seeing  him — or  so  he  believed.  Horri- 
ble !  It  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  in  this  moment  of  despair  he 
was  little  more  to  her  than  the  witness,  the  occasion,  of  her 
discomfiture. 

Ob  !  his  heart  was  sore.  But  he  could  do  nothing.  Caresses, 
encouragements,  reproaches,  were  alike  useless.  For  some  time 
she  would  make  no  further  attempts  at  drawing  ;  nor  would  she 
be  wooed  and  comforted.  She  held  him  passively  at  arm's 
length,  and  he  could  make  nothing  of  her.  It  was  the  middle  of 
their  third  week  ;  still  almost  the  half  left  of  this  month  she  had 
promised  him.  And  already  it  was  clear  to  him  that  he  and  love 
had  lost  their  first  hold,  and  that  she  was  consumed  with  the 
unspoken  wish  to  go  baok  to  Paris,  and  the  atelier.  Ah,  no  ! — 
no  !  With  a  fierce  yet  dumb  tenacity  he  held  her  to  her  bargain. 
Those  weeks  were  his  ;  they  represented  his  only  hope  for  the 
future  ;  she  should  not  have  them  back. 

But  he,  too,  fell  into  melancholy  and  silence,  and  on  the 
afternoon  when  this  change  in  him  first  showed  itself  she  was, 
for  a  time,  touched,  ashamed.  A  few  pale  smiles  returned  for 
him,  and  in  the  evening,  as  he  was  sitting  by  the  open  window,  a 
newspaper  on  his  knee,  staring  into  vacancy,  she  came  up  to  him, 
knelt  beside  him,  and  drew  his  half -reluctant  arm  about  her. 
Neither  said  anything,  but  gradually  her  presence  there,  on  his 
breast,  thrilled  through  all  his  veins,  filled  his  heart  to  bursting. 
The  paper  slid  away  ;  he  put  both  arms  about  her,  and  bowed  his 
head  on  hers.  She  put  up  her  small  hand,  and  felt  the  tears  on 
his  cheek.  Then  a  still  stronger  repentance  woke  up  in  her. 

'  Pauvre  enfant  /'  she  said,  pushing  herself  away  from  him, 
and  tremulously  drying  his  eyes.  '  Poor  Monsieur  David — I 
make  you  very  unhappy  !  But  I  warned  you — oh,  I  warned  you  ! 
What  evil  star  made  you  fall  in  love  with  me  ? ' 

In  answer  he  found  such  plaintive  and  passionate  things  to 
say  to  her  that  she  was  fairly  melted,  and  in  the  end  there  was 
an  effusion  on  both  sides,  which  seemed  to  bring  back  their 
golden  hours.  But  at  bottom,  David's  sensitive  instinct,  do  what 
he  would  to  silence  it,  told  him,  in  truth,  that  all  was  changed. 
He  was  no  longer  the  happy  and  triumphant  lover.  He  was  the 
beggar,  living  upon  her  alms. 

CHAPTER  IX 

NEXT  morning  David  went  across  to  the  village  shop  to  buy  some 
daily  necessaries,  and  found  a  few  newspapers  lying  on  the 
counter.  He  bought  a  Debats,  seeing  that  there  was  a  long 


CHAP,  ix  STORM  AND  STRESS  347 

critique  of  the  Salon  in  it,  and  hurried  home  with  it  to  Elise.  She 
tore  it  open  and  rushed  through  the  article,  putting  him  aside 
that  he  might  not  look  over  her.  Her  face  blanched  as  she  read, 
and  at  the  end  she  flung  the  paper  from  her,  and  tottering  to  a 
chair  sat  there  motionless,  staring  straight  before  her.  David, 
beside  himself  with  alarm,  and  finding  caresses  of  no  avail,  took 
up  the  paper  from  the  floor. 

'  Let  it  alone ! '  she  said  to  him  with  a  sudden  imperiouf 
gesture.  '  There  is  a  whole  paragraph  about  Breal — her  fortune 
is  made.  La  voila  lancee — arrirte  !  And  of  me,  not  a  line,  not 
a  mention  !  Three  or  four  pupils  of  Taranne — all  beginners — 
but  my  name — nowhere  !  Ah,  but  no — it  is  too  much  ! ' 

Her  little  foot  beat  the  ground,  a  hurricane  was  rising  within 
her. 

David  tried  to  laugh  the  matter  off.  '  The  man  who  wrote 
the  wretched  thing  had  been  hurried — was  an  idiot,  clearly,  and 
what  did  one  man's  opinion  matter,  even  if  it  were  paid  for  at  so 
much  a  column  ?' 

'•Mais,  tais-toi,  done!'1  she  cried  at  last,  turning  upon  him  in 
a  fury.  '  Can't  you  see  that  everything  for  an  artist — especially 
a  woman — depends  on  the  protections  she  gets  at  the  beginning  ? 
How  can  a  girl — helpless — without  friends — make  her  way  by 
herself?  Some  one  must  hold  out  a  hand,  and  for  me  it  seems 
there  is  no  one — no  one  ! ' 

The  outburst  seemed  to  his  common  sense  to  imply  the  most 
grotesque  oblivion  of  her  success  in  the  Salon,  of  Taraune's  kind- 
ness— the  most  grotesque  sensitiveness  to  a  few  casual  lines  of 
print.  But  it  wrung  his  heart  to  see  her  agitation,  her  pale  face, 
the  handkerchief  she  was  twisting  to  shreds  in  her  restless  hands. 
He  came  to  plead  with  her — his  passion  lending  him  eloquence. 
Let  her  but  trust  herself  and  her  gift.  She  had  the  praise  of 
those  she  revered  to  go  upon.  How  should  the  carelessness  of  a 
single  critic  affect  her?  Imbeciles! — they  would  be  all  with  her, 
at  her  feet,  some  day.  Let  her  despise  them  then  and  now  !  But 
his  extravagances  only  made  her  impatient. 

'  Nonsense  ! '  she  said,  drawing  her  hand  away  from  him  ;  '  I 
am  not  made  of  such  superfine  stuff — I  never  pretended  to  be ! 
Do  you  think  I  should  be  content  to  be  an  unknown  genius  ? 
Never  ! — I  must  have  my  fame  counted  out  to  me  in  good  current 
coin,  that  all  the  world  may  hear  and  see.  It  may  be  vulgar — I 
don't  care  !  it  is  so.  J7i,  mon  Dieu  ! '  and  she  began  to  pace  the 
room  with  wild  steps,  'and  it  is  my  fault — my  fault  !  If  I  were 
there  on  the  spot,  I  should  be  remembered — they  would  have  to 
reckon  with  me — I  could  keep  my  claim  in  sight.  But  I  have 
thrown  away  everything — wasted  everything — everything  /' 

He  stood  with  his  back  to  the  window,  motionless,  his  hand 
on.  the  table,  stooping  a  little  forward,  looking  at  her  with  a 
passion  of  reproach  and  misery;  it  only  angered  her;  she  lost 
all  self-control,  and  in  one  mad  moment  she  avenged  on  his  poor 
heart  all  the  wounds  and  vexations  of  her  vanity.  Why  had  he 


348  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  nr 

ever  persuaded  her  ?  Why  had  he  brought  her  away  and  hung  a 
fresh  burden  on  her  life  which  she  could  never  bear  ?  Why  had 
he  done  her  this  irreparable  injury — taken  all  simplicity  and 
directness  of  aim  from  her — weakened  her  energies  at  their 
source  ?  Her  only  milieu  was  art,  and  he  had  made  her  desert 
it ;  her  only  power  was  the  painter's  power,  and  it  was  crippled, 
the  fresh  spring  of  it  was  gone.  It  was  because  she  felt  on  her 
the  weight  of  a  responsibility,  and  a  claim  she  was  not  made  for. 
She  was  not  made  for  love — for  love  at  least  as  he  understood  it. 
And  he  had  her  word,  and  would  hold  her  to  it.  It  was  madness 
for  both  of  them.  It  was  stifling — killing  her  ! 

Then  she  sank  on  a  chair,  in  a  passion  of  desperate  tears. 
Suddenly,  as  she  sat  there,  she  heard  a  movement,  and  looking 
up  she  saw  David  at  the  door.  He  turned  upon  her  for  an 
instant,  with  a  dignity  so  tragic,  so  true,  and  yet  so  young,  that 
she  was  perforce  touched,  arrested.  She  held  out  a  trembling 
hand,  made  a  little  cry.  But  he  closed  the  door  softly,  and  was 
gone.  She  half  raised  herself,  then  fell  back  again. 

'If  he  had  beaten  me,'  she  said  to  herself  with  a  strange 
smile,  '  I  could  have  loved  him.  Mais  I ' 

She  was  all  day  alone.  When  he  came  back  it  was  already 
evening ;  the  stars  shone  in  the  June  sky,  but  the  sunset  light 
was  still  in  the  street  and  on  the  upper  windows  of  the  little 
house.  As  he  opened  the  garden  gate  and  shut  it  behind  him, 
he  saw  the  gleam  of  a  lamp  behind  the  acacia,  and  a  light  figure 
beside  it.  He  stood  a  moment  wrestling  with  himself,  for  he  was 
wearied  out,  and  felt  as  if  he  could  bear  no  more.  Then  he 
moved  slowly  on. 

Elise  was  sitting  beside  the  lamp,  her  head  bent  over  some- 
thing dark  upon  her  lap.  She  had  not  heard  the  gate  open,  and 
she  did  not  hear  his  steps  upon  the  grass.  He  came  closer,  and 
saw,  to  his  amazement,  that  she  was  busy  with  a  coat  of  his — an 
old  coat,  in  the  sleeve  of  which  he  had  torn  a  great  rent  the  day 
before,  while  he  was  dragging  her  and  himself  through  some 
underwood  in  the  forest.  She — who  loathed  all  womanly  arts, 
who  had  often  boasted  to  him  that  she  hardly  knew  how  to  use  a 
needle  ! 

In  moving  nearer,  he  brushed  against  the  shrubs,  and  she 
heard  him.  She  turned  her  head,  smiling.  In  the  mingled  light 
she  looked  like  a  little  white  ghost,  she  was  so  pale  and  her  eyes 
so  heavy.  When  she  saw  him,  she  raised  her  finger  with  a 
childish,  aggrieved  air,  and  put  it  to  her  lips,  rubbing  it  softly 
against  them. 

'  It  does  prick  so  ! '  she  said  plaintively. 

He  came  to  sit  beside  her,  his  chest  heaving. 

'  Why  do  you  do  that — for  me  ? ' 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  worked  on  without  speaking. 
Presently  she  laid  down  her  needle  and  surveyed  him. 

'  Where  have  you  been  all  day  ?  Have  you  eaten  nothing, 
poor  friend  ? ' 


CHAP,  ix  STORM   AND  STRESS  349 

He  tried  to  remember. 

'  I  think  not ;  I  have  been  in  the  forest.' 

A  little  quiver  ran  over  her  face  ;  she  pulled  at  her  needle 
violently  and  broke  the  thread. 

'Finished  !'  she  said,  throwing  down  the  coat  and  springing 
up.  '  Don't  tell  your  tailor  who  did  it  !  I  am  for  perfection  in 
all  things — a  bos  V amateur  !  Come  in,  it  is  supper-time  past.  I 
will  go  and  hurry  Madame  Pyat.  Tu  dots  avoir  une  faim  de 
loup. ' 

He  shook  his  head,  smiling  sadly. 

'  I  tell  you,  you  are  hungry,  you  shall  be  hungry  ! '  she  cried, 
suddenly  flinging  her  arm  round  his  neck,  and  nestling  her  fair 
head  against  his  shoulder.  Her  voice  was  half  a  sob. 

'  Oh,  so  I  am  ! — so  I  am  ! '  he  said,  with  a  wild  emphasis,  and 
would  have  caught  her  to  him.  But  she  slipped  away  and  ran 
before  him  to  the  house,  turning  at  the  window  with  the  sweet- 
est, frankest  gesture  to  bid  him  follow. 

They  passed  the  evening  close  together,  she  on  a  stool  leaning 
against  his  knee,  he  reading  aloud  Alfred  de  Musset's  Nuit  de 
Mai.  At  one  moment  she  was  all  absorbed  in  the  verse,  carried 
away  by  it ;  great  battle-cry  that  it  is !  calling  the  artist  from 
the  miseries  of  his  own  petty  fate  to  the  lordship  of  life  and 
nature  as  a  whole  ;  the  next  she  had  snatched  the  book  out  of 
his  hands  and  was  correcting  his  accent,  bidding  him  speak  after 
her,  put  his  lips  so.  Never  had  she  been  so  charming.  It  was 
the  coaxing  charm  of  the  softened  child  that  cannot  show  its 
penitence  enough.  Every  now  and  then  she  fell  to  pouting 
because  she  could  not  move  him  to  gaiety.  But  in  reality  his 
sad  and  passive  gentleness,  the  mask  of  feelings  which  would 
otherwise  have  been  altogether  beyond  his  control,  served  him 
with  her  better  than  any  gaiety  could  have  done. 

Gaiety  !  it  seemed  to  him  his  heart  was  broken. 

At  night,  after  a  troubled  sleep,  he  suddenly  woke,  and 
sprang  up  in  an  agony.  Gone!  was  she  gone  alread'y  ?  For  that 
was  what  her  sweet  ways  meant.  Ah,  he  had  known  it  all 
along ! 

Where  was  she  ?  His  wild  eyes  for  a  second  or  two  saw 
nothing  but  the  landscape  of  his  desolate  dream.  Then  gradually 
the  familiar  forms  of  the  room  emerged  from  the  gloom,  and 
there — against  the  further  wall — she  lay,  so  still,  so  white,  so 
gracious  !  Her  childish  arm,  bare  to  the  elbow,  was  thrown 
round  her  head,  her  soft  waves  of  hair  made  a  confusion  on  the 
pillow.  After  her  long  day  of  emotion  she  was  sleeping  pro- 
foundly. Whatever  cruel  secret  her  heart  might  hold,  she  was 
there  still,  his  yet,  for  a  few  hours  and  days,  lie  was  persuaded 
in  his  own  mind  that  her  penitence  had  been  the  mere  fruit  of  a 
compromise  with  herself,  their  month  had  still  eight  days  to  run, 
then — adieu!  Art  and  liberty  should  reclaim  their  own.  Mean- 
while why  torment  the  poor  boy,  who  must  any  way  take  it 
hardly  ? 


350  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ra 

He  lay  there  for  long,  raised  upon  his  arm,  his  haggard  look 
fixed  on  the  sleeping  form  which  by-and-by  the  dawn  illuminated. 
His  life  was  concentrated  in  that  form,  that  light  breath.  He 
thought  with  repulsion  and  loathing  of  all  that  had  befallen 
him  before  he  saw  her — with  anguish  and  terror  of  those  days 
and  nights  to  come  when  he  should  have  lost  her.  For  in  the 
deep  stillness  of  the  rising  day  there  fell  on  him  the  strangest 
certainty  of  this  loss.  That  gift  of  tragic  prescience  which  was 
in  his  blood  had  stirred  in  him — he  knew  his  fate.  Perhaps  the 
gift  itself  was  but  the  fruit  of  a  rare  power  of  self-vision,  self- 
appraisement.  He  saw  and  cursed  his  own  timid  and  ignorant 
youth.  How  could  he  ever  have  hoped  to  hold  a  creature  of  such 
complex  needs  and  passions  ?  In  the  pale  dawn  he  sounded  the 
very  depths  of  self-contempt. 

But  when  the  day  was  up  and  Elise  was  chattering  and  flit- 
ting about  the  house  as  usual  without  a  word  of  discord  or  part- 
ing, how  was  it  possible  to  avoid  reaction,  the  re-birth  of  hope  ? 
She  talked  of  painting  again,  and  that  alone,  after  these  long 
days  of  sullen  alienation  from  her  art,  was  enough  to  bring  the 
brightness  back  to  their  little  menage  and  to  dull  that  strange 
second  sight  of  David's.  He  helped  her  to  set  her  palette,  to 
choose  a  new  canvas  ;  he  packed  her  charcoals,  he  beguiled  some 
cold  meat  and  bread  out  of  Madame,  and  then  before  the  heat 
they  set  out  together  for  the  Bas  Breau. 

Just  as  they  started  he  searched  his  pockets  for  a  knife  of 
hers  which  was  missing,  and  thrusting  his  hand  into  a  breast 
pocket  which  he  seldom  used,  he  brought  out  some  papers  at 
which  he  stared  in  bewilderment. 

Then  a  shock  went  through  him  ;  for  there  was  Mr.  Gurney's 
letter,  the  letter  in  which  the  cheque  for  600/.  had  been  enclosed, 
and  there  was  also  that  faded  scrap  of  Sandy's  writing  which 
contained  the  father's  last  injunction  to  his  son.  As  he  held  the 
papers  he  remembered — what  he  had  forgotten  for  weeks — that 
on  the  morning  of  his  leaving  Manchester  he  had  put  them  care- 
fully into  this  breast  pocket,  not  liking  to  leave  things  so  interest- 
ing to  him  behind  him,  out.  of  his  reach.  Never  had  he  given  a 
thought  to  them  since  !  He  looked  down  at  them,  half  ashamed, 
and  his  eye  caught  the  words  : — '  I  lay  it  on  him  now  Pm  dying 
to  look  after  her.  Site's  not  like  other  children;  she'll  want  it. 
Let  him  see  her  married  to  a  decent  man,  and  give  her  what's 
honestly  hers.  I  trust  it  to  him.  That  little  lad — '  and  then 
came  the  fold  of  the  sheet. 

'I  have  found  the  knife,'  cried  Elise  from  the  gate.  'Be 
quick  ! ' 

He  pushed  the  papers  back  and  joined  her.  The  day  was 
already  hot,  and  they  hurried  along  the  burning  street  into  the 
shade  of  the  forest.  Once  in  the  Bas  Breau  Elise  was  not  long  in 
finding  a  subject,  fell  upon  a  promising  one  indeed  almost  at  once, 
and  was  soon  at  work.  This  time  there  were  to  be  no  figures, 


CHAP,  ix  STORM  AND  STRESS  351 

unless  indeed  it  might  be  a  dim  pair  of  woodcutters  in  the  middle 
distance,  and  the  whole  picture  was  to  be  an  impressionist  dream 
of  early  summer,  finished  entirely  out  of  doors,  as  rapidly  and 
cleanly  as  possible.  David  lay  on  the  ground  under  the  blasted 
oak  and  watched  her,  as  she  sat  on  her  camp-stool,  bending  for- 
ward, looking  now  up,  now  down,  using  her  charcoal  in  bold 
energetic  strokes,  her  lip  compressed,  her  brow  knit  over  some 
point  of  composition.  The  little  figure  in  its  pink  cotton  was  so 
daintily  pretty,  so  full  of  interest  and  wilful  charm,  it  might  well 
have  filled  a  lover's  eye  and  chained  his  thoughts.  But  David 
was  restless  and  at  times  absent. 

'Tell  me  what  you  know  of  that  man  Montjoie?'  he  asked 
her  at  last,  abruptly.  '  I  know  you  disliked  him.' 

She  paused,  astonished. 

'  Why  do  you  ask  ?  Dislike — I  detest  and  despise  him.  I  told 
you  so.' 

'  But  what  do  you  know  of  him  ? '  he  persisted. 

'  No  good  ! '  she  said  quickly,  going  back  to  her  work.  Then 
a  light  broke  upon  her,  and  she  turned  on  her  stool,  her  two 
hands  on  her  knees. 

'  Tiens  ! — you  are  thinking  of  your  sister.  You  have  had 
news  of  her?' 

A  conscious  half-remorseful  look  rose  into  her  face. 

'  No,  I  have  had  no  news.  I  ought  to  have  had  a  letter.  I 
wrote,  you  remember,  that  first  day  here.  Perhaps  Louie  has 
gone  home  already,'  he  said,  with  constraint.  'Tell  me  anyway 
what  you  know.' 

'Oh,  he! — well,  there  is  only  one  word  for  him — he  is  a 
brute!''  said  Elise,  drawing  vigorously,  her  colour  rising.  'Any 
woman  will  tell  you  that.  Oh,  he  has  plenty  of  talent,— he 
might  be  anything.  Carpeaux  took  him  up  at  one  time,  got  him 
commissions.  Five  or  six  years  ago  there  \\  as  quite  a  noise  about 
him  for  two  or  three  Salons.  Then  people  began  to  drop  him. 
I  believe  he  was  the  most  mean,  ungrateful  animal  towards  those 
who  had  been  kind  to  him.  He  drinks  besides — he  is  over  head 
and  ears  in  debt,  always  wanting  money,  borrowing  hei'e  and 
there,  then  locking  his  door  for  weeks,  making  believe  to  be  out 
of  town — only  going  out  at  night.  As  for  his  ways  with  women ' 
—she  shrugged  her  shoulders — '  Was  your  sifter  still  sitting  to 
him  when  we  left,  or  was  it  at  an  end  ?  Hasn't  your  sister  been 
sitting  to  him  for  his  statue  ? ' 

She  paused  again  and  studied  him  with  her  shrewd,  bright 
eyes. 

He  coloured  angrily. 

'  I  believe  so — I  tried  to  stop  it — it  was  no  use.' 

She  laughed  out. 

'  No — I  imagine  she  does  what  she  wants  to  do.  Well,  we 
all  do,  mon  ami  !  After  all ' — and  she  shrugged  her  shoulders 
again — '  I  suppose  she  can  do  what  I  did  ? ' 

'  What  you  did  ! ' 


352  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

She  went  on  drawing  in  sharp  deliberate  strokes  ;  her  breath 
came  fast. 

'He  met  me  on  the  stairs  one  night — it  was  just  after  I  had 
taken  the  atelier.  I  knew  no  one  in  the  house — I  was  quite 
defenceless  there.  He  insulted  me — I  had  a  little  walking-stick 
in  my  hand,  my  cousin  had  given  me — I  struck  him  with  it  across 
the  face  twice,  three  times — if  you  look  close  you  will  see  the 
mark.  You  may  imagine  he  tells  fine  stories  of  me  when  he  gets 
the  chance.  Oh  !  je  tn'enfiche  ! ' 

The  scorn  of  the  last  gesture  was  unmeasured. 

4  Canaille  ! '  said  David,  between  his  teeth.  '  If  you  had  told 
me  this ! ' 

Her  expression  changed  and  softened. 

'  You  asked  me  no  questions  after  that  quarrel  we  had  in  the 
Louvre,'  she  said,  excusing  herself.  '  You  will  understand  it 
is  not  a  reminiscence  one  is  exactly  proud  of ;  I  did  speak  to 
Madame  Cervin  once — ' 

David  said  nothing,  but  sat  staring  before  him  into  the  far 
vistas  of  the  wood.  It  seemed  strange  that  so  great  a  smart 
and  fear  as  had  possessed  him  since  yesterday,  should  allow  of 
any  lesser  smart  within  or  near  it.  Yet  that  scrap  of  tremulous 
writing  weighed  heavy.  Where  was  Louie  ;  why  had  she  not 
written  ?  So  far  he  had  turned  impatiently  away  from  the 
thought  of  her,  reiterating  that  he  had  done  his  best,  that  she 
had  chosen  her  own  path.  Now  in  this  fragrant  quiet  of  the 
forest  the  quick  vision  of  some  irretrievable  wreck  presented 
itself  to  him ;  he  thought  of  Mr.  Ancrum — of  John — and 
a  cold  shudder  ran  through  him.  In  it  spoke  the  conscience  of 
a  lifetime. 

Elise  meanwhile  laid  aside  her  charcoal,  began  to  dash  in 
some  paint,  drew  back  presently  to  look  at  it  from  a  distance, 
and  then,  glancing  aside,  suddenly  threw  down  her  brushes, 
and  ran  up  to  David. 

She  sat  down  beside  him,  and  with  a  coaxing,  childish 
gesture,  drew  his  arm  about  her. 

4  Tu  me  fais  pittt,  mon  ami!'1  she  said,  looking  up  into  his 
face.  '  Is  it  your  sister  ?  Go  and  find  her — I  will  wait  for  you.' 

He  turned  upon  her,  his  black  eyes  all  passion,  his  lips 
struggling  with  speech. 

'My  place  is  here,'  he  said.     '  My  life  is  here  ! ' 

Then,  as  she  was  silent,  not  knowing  in  her  agitation  what  to 
say,  he  broke  out  : 

4  What  was  in  your  mind  yesterday,  Elise  ?  what  is  there 
to-day  ?  There  is  something — something  I  will  know.' 

She  was  frightened  by  his  look.  Never  did  fear  and  grief 
speak  more  plainly  from  a  human  face.  The  great  deep  within 
had  broken  up. 

'I  was  sorry,'  she  said,  trembling,  'sorry  to  have  hurt  you. 
I  wanted  to  make  up.' 

He  flung  her  hand  away  from  him  with  an  impatient  gesture. 


CHAP,  ix  STORM  AND  STRESS  353 

'  There  was  more  than  that ! '  he  said  violently  ;  '  will  you  be 
like  all  the  rest — betray  me  without  a  sign  ? ' 

'  David  ! ' 

She  bit  her  lip  proudly.  Then  the  tears  welled  up  into  her 
grey  eyes,  and  she  looked  round  at  him — hesitated — began  and 
stopped  again — then  broke  into  irrevocable  confession. 

'  David  ! — Monsieur  David  ! — how  can  it  go  on  ?  Voyons — I 
said  to  myself  yesterday — I  am  torturing  him  and  myself — I 
cannot  make  him  happy — it  is  not  in  me — not  in  my  destiny. 
It  must  end — it  must, — it  must,  for  both  our  sakes.  But  then 
first, — first — 

'Be  quiet!'  he  said,  laying  an  iron  hand  on  her  arm.  'I 
knew  it  all.' 

And  he  turned  away  from  her,  covering  his  face. 

This  time  she  made  no  attempt  to  caress  him.  She  clasped 
her  hands  round  her  knees  and  remained  quite  still,  gazing — yet 
seeing  nothing — into  the  green  depths  which  five  minutes  before 
had  been  to  her  a  torturing  ecstasy  of  colour  and  light.  The 
tears  which  had  been  gathering  fell,  the  delicate  lip  quivered. 

Struck  by  her  silence  at  last,  he  looked  up — watched  her  a 
moment — then  he  dragged  himself  up  to  her  and  knelt  beside 
her. 

'  Have  I  made  you  so  miserable  ? '  he  said,  under  his  breath. 

'  It  is — it  is — the  irreparableness  of  it  all,'  she  answered,  half 
sobbing.  '  No  undoing  it  ever,  and  how  a  woman  glides  into  it, 
how  lightly,  knowing  so  little  ! — thinking  herself  so  wise  !  And 
if  she  has  deceived  herself,  if  she  is  not  made  for  love,  if  she 
has  given  herself  for  so  little — for  an  illusion — for  a  dream  that 
breaks  and  must  break — how  dare  the  man  reproach  her,  after 
all?' 

She  raised  her  burning  eyes  to  him.  The  resentment  in 
them  seemed  to  be  more  than  individual,  it  was  the  resentment 
of  the  woman,  of  her  sex. 

She  stabbed  him  to  the  heart  by  what  she  said — by  what  she 
left  unsaid.  He  took  her  little  cold  hand,  put  it  to  his  lips — 
tried  to  speak. 

'  Don't,'  she  said,  drawing  it  away  and  hiding  her  face  on  her 
knees.  'Don't  say  anything.  It  is  not  you,  it  is  God  and 
Nature  that  I  accuse.' 

Strange,  bitter  word  ! — word  of  revolt !  He  lay  on  his  face 
beside  her  for  many  minutes  afterwards,  tasting  the  bitterness 
of  it,  revolving  those  other  words  she  had  said — '•an  illusion — a 
dream  that  breaks — must  break?  Then  he  made  a  last  effort. 
He  came  close  to  her,  laid  his  arm  timidly  round  her  shoulders, 
bent  his  cheek  to  hers. 

'  Elise,  listen  to  me  a  little.  You  say  the  debt  is  on  my  side 
— that  is  true — true — a  thousand  times  true  !  I  only  ask  you, 
implore  you,  to  let  me  pay  it.  Let  it  be  as  you  please — on  what 
terms  you  please — servant  or  lover.  All  I  pray  for  is  to  pay 
that  debt,  with  my  life,  my  heart.' 


354  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

She  shook  her  head  softly,  her  face  still  hidden. 

'  When  I  am  with  you,'  she  said,  as  though  the  words  were 
wrung  out  of  her,  '  I  must  be  a  woman.  You  agitate  me,  you 
divide  my  mind,  and  my  force  goes.  There  are  both  capacities 
in  me,  and  one  destroys  the  other.  And  I  want — I  want  my 
art!' 

She  threw  back  her  head  with  a  superb  gesture.  But  he  did 
not  flinch. 

'  You  shall  have  it,'  he  said  passionately,  '  have  it  abundantly. 
Do  you  think  I  want  to  keep  you  for  ever  loitering  here  ?  Do  you 
think  I  don't  know  what  ambition  and  will  mean  ?  that  I  am  only 
fit  for  kissing  ? ' 

He  stopped  almost  with  a  smile,  thinking  of  that  harsh  strug- 
gle to  know  and  to  have,  in  which  his  youth  had  been  so  far 
consumed  night  and  day.  Then  words  rushed  upon  him  again, 
and  he  went  on  with  a  growing  power  and  freedom. 

'  I  never  looked  at  a  woman  till  I  saw  you  ! — never  had  a 
whim,  a  caprice.  I  have  eaten  my  heart  out  with  the  struggle 
first  for  bread,  then  for  knowledge.  But  when  you  came  across 
me,  then  the  world  was  all  made  new,  and  I  became  a  new 
creature,  your  creature.' 

He  touched  her  face  with  a  quick,  tender  hand,  laid  it  against 
his  breast,  and  spoke  so,  bending  piteously  down  to  her,  within 
reach  of  her  quivering  mouth,  her  moist  eyes  : — 

'  Tell  me  this,  Elise — answer  me  this  !  How  can  there  be 
great  art,  great  knowledge,  only  from  the  brain, — without  pas- 
sion, without  experience  ?  You  and  I  have  been  living  what 
Musset,  what  Hugo,  what  Shakespeare  wrote,'  and  he  struck  the 
little  volume  of  Musset  beside  him.  '  Is  not  that  worth  a  summer 
month?  not  worth  the  artist's  while?  But  it  is  nearly  gone. 
You  can't  wonder  that  I  count  the  moments  of  it  like  a  miser  ! 
I  have  had  a  hard  life,  and  this  has  transfigured  it.  Whatever 
happens  now  in  time  or  eternity,  this  month  is  to  the  good — for 
me  and  for  you,  Elise  ! — yes,  for  you,  too  !  But  when  it  is  over, — 
see  if  I  hold  you  back  !  We  will  work  together — climb — wrestle, 
together.  And  on  what  terms  you  please, — mind  that, — only 
dictate  them.  I  deny  your  "illusion,"  your  "dream  that 
breaks."  You  have  been  happy  !  I  dare  to  tell  you  so.  But 
part  now, — shirk  our  common  destiny, — and  you  will  indeed 
have  given  all  for  nothing,  while  I — ' 

His  voice  sank.  She  shook  her  head  again,  but  as  she  drew 
herself  gently  away  she  was  stabbed  by  the  haggardness  of  the 
countenance,  the  pleading  pathos  of  the  eyes.  His  gust  of  speech 
had  shaken  her  too — revealed  new  points  in  him.  She  bent  for- 
ward quickly  and  laid  her  soft  lips  to  his,  for  one  light  swift 
moment. 

'  Poor  boy  1 '  she  murmured,  '  poor  poet  1 ' 

'  Ah,  that  was  enough  ! '  he  said,  the  colour  flooding  his 
cheeks.  '  That  healed — that  made  all  good.  Will  you  hide 
nothing  from  me,  Elise — will  you  promise  ? ' 


CHAP,  ix  STORM  AND   STRESS  855 

'  Anything,'  she  said  with  a  curious  accent,  '  anything — if  you 
will  but  let  me  paint.' 

He  sprang  up,  and  put  her  things  in  order  for  her.  They 
stood  looking  at  the  sketch,  neither  seeing  much  of  it. 

'  I  must  have  some  more  cobalt,'  she  said  wearily.  '  Look,  my 
tube  is  nearly  done. ' 

Yes,  that  was  certain.  He  must  get  some  more  for  her. 
Where  could  it  be  got  ?  No  nearer  than  Fontainebleau,  alas ! 
where  there  was  a  shop  which  provided  all  the  artists  of  the 
neighbourhood.  He  was  eagerly  ready  to  go— it  would  take  him 
no  time. 

'  It  will  take  you  between  two  and  tlu-ee  hours,  sir,  in  this 
heat.  But  oh,  I  am  so  tired,  I  will  just  creep  into  the  fern  there 
while  you  are  away,  and  go  to  sleep.  Give  me  that  book  and 
that  shawl.' 

He  made  a  place  for  her  between  the  spurs  of  a  great  oak- 
root,  tearing  the  brambles  away.  She  nestled  into  it,  with  a  sigh 
of  satisfaction.  '  Divine  !  Take  your  food — I  want  nothing  but 
the  air  and  sleep.  Adieu,  adieu  !  ' 

He  stood  gazing  down  upon  her,  his  face  all  tender  lingering 
and  remorse.  How  white  she  was,  how  fragile,  how  shaken  by 
this  storm  of  feeling  he  had  forced  upon  her !  How  could  he 
leave  her? 

But  she  waved  him  away  impatiently,  and  he  went  at  last, 
going  first  back  to  the  village  to  fetch  his  purse  which  was  not  in 
his  pocket. 

As  he  came  out  of  their  little  garden  gate,  turning  again 
towards  the  forest  which  he  must  cross  in  order  to  get  to  Fon- 
tainebleau, he  became  aware  of  a  group  of  men  standing  in  front 
of  the  inn.  Two  of  them  were  the  landscape  artists  already 
slightly  known  to  him,  who  saluted  him  as  he  came  near.  The 
other  was  a  tall  fine-looking  man,  with  longish  grizzled  hair,  a 
dark  commanding  eye,  the  rosette  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  at  his 
buttonhole,  and  a  general  look  of  irritable  power.  He  wore  a 
wide  straw7  hat  and  holland  overcoat,  and  beside  him  on  the 
bench  lay  some  artist's  paraphernalia. 

All  three  eyed  David  as  he  passed,  and  he  was  no  sooner  a 
few  yards  away  than  they  were  looking  after  him  and  talking, 
the  new-comer  asking  questions,  the  others  replying. 

'  Oh,  it  is  she  ! '  said  the  stranger  impatiently,  throwing  away 
his  cigar.  '  Auguste's  description  leaves  me  no  doubt  of  it,  and 
the  woman  at  the  house  in  the  Rue  Chantal  where  I  had  the 
caprice  to  inquire  one  day,  when  she  had  been  three  weeks  away, 
told  me  they  were  here.  It  is  annoying.  Something  might  have 
been  made  of  her.  Now  it  is  finished.  A  handsome  lad  all  the 
same  ! — of  a  rare  type.  Non  ! — -je  me  suis  trompi — en  devenant 
femme,  elJe  n^a  pas  cesse"  d'etre  artiste  /' 

The  others  laughed.  Then  they  all  took  up  their  various 
equipments,  and  strolled  off  smoking  to  the  forest.  The  man 
from  Paris  was  engaged  upon  a  large  historical  canvas  represent- 


<J56  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

ing  an  incident  in  the  life  of  Diane  de  Poitiers.  The  incident 
had  Diane's  forest  for  a  setting,  but  his  trees  did  not  satisfy  him, 
he  had  come  down  to  make  a  few  fresh  studies  on  the  spot. 

David  walked  his  four  miles  to  Fontainebleau,  bought  his 
cobalt,  and  set  his  face  homewards  about  three  o'clock.  When 
he  was  halfway  home,  he  turned  aside  into  a  tangle  of  young 
beech  wood,  parted  the  branches,  and  found  a  shady  corner  where 
he  could  rest  and  think.  The  sun  was  very  hot,  the  high  road 
was  scorched  by  it.  But  it  was  not  heat  or  fatigue  that  had  made 
him  pause. 

So  far  he  had  walked  in  a  tumult  of  conflicting  ideas,  emotions, 
terrors,  torn  now  by  this  memory,  now  by  that — his  mind  tra- 
versed by  one  project  after  another.  But  now  that  he  was  so 
near  to  meeting  her  again,  though  he  pined  for  her,  he  suddenly 
and  pitifully  felt  the  need  for  some  greater  firmness  of  mind  and 
will.  Let  him  pause  and  think  !  Where  was  he  with  her  ? — 
what  were  his  real,  tangible  hopes  and  fears?  Life  and  death 
depended  for  him  on  these  days — these  few  vanishing  days. 
And  he  was  like  one  of  the  last  year's  leaves  before  him,  whirled 
helpless  and  will-less  in  the  dust-storm  of  the  road  ! 

He  had  sat  there  an  unnoticed  time  when  the  sound  of  some 
heavy  carriage  approaching  roused  him.  From  his  green  covert 
he  could  see  all  that  passed,  and  instinctively  he  looked  up.  It 
was  the  Barbizon  diligence  going  in  to  meet  the  five  o'clock  train 
at  Fontainebleau,  a  train  which  in  these  lengthening  days  very 
often  brought  guests  to  the  inn.  The  correspondance  had  been 
only  begun  during  the  last  week,  and  to  the  dwellers  at  Barbizon 
the  afternoon  diligence  had  still  the  interest  of  novelty.  With  the 
perception  of  habit  David  noticed  that  there  was  no  one  outside  ; 
but  though  the  rough  blinds  were  most  of  them  drawn  down  he 
thought  he  perceived  some  one  inside — a  lady.  Strange  that 
anyone  should  prefer  the  stifling  interieur  who  could  mount 
beside  the  driver  with  a  parasol  ! 

The  omnibus  clattered  past,  and  with  the  renewal  of  the  wood- 
land silence  his  mind  plunged  heavily  once  more  into  the  agonised 
balancing  of  hope  and  fear.  But  in  the  end  he  sprang  up  with  a 
renewed  alertness  of  eye  and  step. 

Despair?  Impossible  ! — so  long  as  one  had  one's  love  still  in 
one's  arms — could  still  plead  one's  cause,  hand  to  hand,  lip  to 
lip.  He  strode  homewards — running  sometimes — the  phrases  of 
a  new  and  richer  eloquence  crowding  to  his  lips. 

About  a  mile  from  Barbizon,  the  path  to  the  Bas  Breau 
diverges  to  the  right.  He  sped  along  it,  leaping  the  brambles  in 
his  path.-  Soon  he  was  on  the  edge  of  the  great  avenue  itself, 
looking  across  it  for  that  spot  of  colour  among  the  green  made 
by  her  light  dress. 

But  there  was  no  dress,  and  as  he  came  up  to  the  tree  where 
he  had  left  her,  he  saw  to  his  stupefaction  that  there  was  no  one 
there — nothing,  no  sign  of  her  but  the  bracken  and  brambles  he 
had  beaten  down  for  her  some  three  hours  before,  and  the  trodden 


CHAP,  ix  STORM  AND   STRESS  357 

grass  where  her  easel  had  been.  Something  showed  on  the 
ground.  He  stooped  and  noticed  the  empty  cobalt-tube  of  the 
morning. 

Of  course  she  had  grown  tired  of  waiting  and  had  gone  home. 
But  a  great  terror  seized  him.  He  turned  and  ran  along  the 
path  they  had  traversed  in  the  morning  making  for  the  road ; 
past  the  inn  which  seemed  to  have  been  struck  to  sleep  by  the 
'sun,  past  Millet's  studio  on  the  left,  to  the  little  overgrown  door 
in  the  brick  wall. 

No  one  in  the  garden,  no  one  in  the  little  salon,  no  one 
upstairs  ;  Madame  Pyat  was  away  for  the  day,  nursing  a  daughter- 
in-law.  In  all  the  house  and  garden  there  was  not  a  sound  or 
sign  of  life  but  the  cat  asleep  on  the  stone  step  of  the  kitchen, 
and  the  bees  humming  in  the  acacias. 

'Elise!'  he  called,  inside  and  out,  knowing  already,  poor 
fellow,  in  his  wild  despair  that  there  could  be  no  answer — that 
all  was  over. 

But  there  was  an  answer.  Elise  was  no  untaught  heroine. 
She  played  her  part  through.  There  was  her  letter,  propped  up 
against  the  gilt  clock  on  the  sham  marble  chemine'e. 

He  found  it  and  tore  it  open. 

'  You  will  curse  me,  but  after  a  time  you  will  forgive.  I  could 
not  go  on.  Taranne  found  me  in  the  forest,  just  half  an  hour 
after  you  left  me.  I  looked  up  and  saw  him  coming  across  the 
grass.  He  did  not  see  me  at  first,  he  was  looking  about  for  a 
subject.  I  would  have  escaped,  but  there  was  no  way.  Then  at 
last  he  saw  me.  He  did  not  attack  me,  he  did  not  persuade  me, 
he  only  took  for  granted  it  was  all  over, — my  Art !  I  must  know 
best,  of  course  ;  but  he  was  sorry,  for  I  had  a  gift.  Had  I  seen 
the  notice  of  my  portrait  in  the  "Temps, "or  the  little  mention  in 
the  "Figaro"?  Oh,  yes,  Breal  had  been  very  successful,  and 
deserved  to  be.  It  was  a  brave  soul,  devoted  to  art,  and  art  had 
rewarded  her. 

'  Then  I  showed  him  my  sketch,  trembling — to  stop  his  talk 
— every  word  he  said  stabbed  me.  And  he  shrugged  his  shoulders 
quickly ;  then,  as  though  recollecting  himself,  he  put  on  a  civil 
face  all  in  a  moment,  and  paid  me  compliments.  To  an  amateur 
he  is  always  civil.  I  was  all  white  and  shaking  by  this  time. 
He  turned  to  go  away,  and  then  I  broke  down.  1  burst  into  tears 
— I  said  I  was  coming  back  to  the  atelier — what  did  he  mean  by 
taking  such  a  cruel,  such  an  insolent  tone  with  me  ?  He  would 
not  be  moved  from  his  polite  manner.  He  said  he  was  glad  to 
hear  it ;  mademoiselle  would  be  welcome  ;  but  just  as  though 
we  were  complete  strangers.  He  who  has  befriended  me,  and 
taught  me,  and  scolded  me  since  I  was  fourteen  !  I  could  not 
bear  it.  I  caught  him  by  the  arm.  I  told  him  he  should  tell  me 
all  he  thought.  Had  I  really  talent  ? — a  future  ? 

'  Then  he  broke  out  in  a  torrent — he  made  me  afraid  of  him — 
yet  I  adored  him  !  He  said  I  had  more  talent  than  any  other 
pupil  he  had  ever  had  ;  that  I  had  been  his  hope  and  interest  for 


358  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

six  years  ;  that  he  had  taught  me  for  nothing — befriended  me — 
worked  for  me,  behind  the  scenes,  at  the  Salon  ;  and  all  because 
he  knew  that  I  must  rise,  must  win  myself  a  name,  that  when  I 
had  got  the  necessary  technique  I  should  make  one  of  the  poetical 
impressionist  painters,  who  are  in  the  movement,  who  sway  the 
public  taste.  But  I  must  give  all  myself — my  days  and  nights — 
my  thoughts,  and  brain,  and  nerves.  Other  people  might  have 
adventures  and  paint  the  better.  Not  I, — I  was  too  highly 
strung — forme  it  was  ruin.  "  C'est  un  maitre  severe — TArt," 
he  said,  looking  like  a  god.  ' '  Avec  celui-la  on  ne  transige  pas. 
Ah!  Dieu,  j'e  le  connais,  moi!"  I  don't  know  what  he  meant; 
but  there  has  been  a  tragedy  in  his  life ;  all  the  world  knows 
that. 

'  Then  suddenly  he  took  another  tone,  called  me  pauvre 
enfant,  and  apologised.  Why  should  I  be  disturbed?  I  had 
chosen  for  my  own  happiness,  no  doubt.  What  was  fame  or  the 
high  steeps  of  art  compared  even  with  an  amour  de  jennesse  ? 
He  had  seen  you,  he  said, — une  tete  superbe — des  epaules  de  lion  ! 
I  was  a  woman  ;  a  young  handsome  lover  was  worth  more  to  me, 
naturally,  than  the  drudgeries  of  art.  A  few  years  hence,  when 
the  pulse  was  calmer,  it  might  have  been  all  very  well.  "Well  !  I 
must  forgive  him ;  he  was  my  old  friend.  Then  he  wrung  my 
hand,  and  left  me. 

'Oh,  David,  David,  I  must  go!  I  must.  My  life  is  im- 
prisoned here  with  you — it  beats  its  bars.  Why  did  I  ever  let 
you  persuade  me — move  mo  ]  And  I  should  let  you  do  it  again. 
When  you  are  there  I  am  weak.  I  am  no  cruel  adventuress,  I 
can't  look  at  you  and  torture  you.  But  what  I  feel  for  you  is 
not  love — no,  no,  it  is  not,  poor  boy  !  Who  was  it  said  "  A  love 
which  can  be  tamed  is  no  love"  ?  But  in  three  days — a  week — 
mine  had  grown  tame — it  had  no  fears  left.  I  am  older  than  you, 
not  in  years,  mais  dans  Tdme — there  is  what  parts  us. 

'  Oh  !  I  must  go — and  you  must  not  try  to  find  me.  I  shall 
be  quite  safe,  but  with  people  you  know  nothing  about.  I  shall 
write  to  Madame  Pyat  for  my  things.  You  need  have  no  trouble. 

'Very  likely  I  shall  pass  you  on  the  way,  for  if  I  hurry  I  can 
catch  the  diligence.  But  you  will  not  see  me.  Oh,  David,  I  put 
my  arms  round  you  !  I  press  my  face  against  you.  I  ask  you 
to  forgive  me,  to  forget  me,  to  work  out  your  own  life  as  I  work 
out  mine.  It  will  soon  be  a  dream — this  little  house — these 
summer  days  !  I  have  kissed  the  chair  you  sat  in  last  night,  the 
book  you  read  to  me.  C'est  dzjafini  !  Adieu!  adieu!'1 

He  sat  for  long  in  a  sort  of  stupor.  Then  that  maddening 
thought  seized  him,  stung  him  into  life,  that  she  had  actually 
passed  him,  that  he  had  seen  her,  not  knowing.  That  little 
indistinct  figure  in  the  Inter  ieur,  that  was  she. 

He  sprang  up,  in  a  blind  anguish.  Pursuit !  the  diligence  was 
slow,  the  trains  doubtful,  he  might  overtake  her  yet.  He  dashed 
into  the  street,  and  into  the  Fontainehleau  road.  After  he  had 
run  nearly  a  mile,  he  plunged  into  a  path  which  he  believed  v,-a? 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND  STRESS  359 

a  short  cut.  It  led  through  a  young  and  dense  oak  wood.  He 
rushed  on,  seeing  nothing,  bruising  himself  and  stumbling.  At 
last  a  projecting  branch  struck  him  violently  on  the  temple.  He 
staggered,  put  up  a  feeble  hand,  sank  on  the  grass  against  a 
trunk,  and  fainted. 

CHAPTER  X 

IT  was  between  five  and  six  o'clock  in  the  morning.  In  the 
Tuileries  Gardens  flowers,  grass,  and  trees  were  drenched  in 
dew,  the  great  shadow  of  the  Palace  spread  grey  and  cool  over 
terraces  and  slopes,  while  beyond  the  young  sun  had  already 
shaken  off  all  cumbering  mists,  and  was  pouring  from  a  cloudless 
sky  over  the  river  with  its  barges  and  swimming-baths,  over  the 
bridges  and  the  quays,  and  the  vast  courts  and  facades  of  the 
Louvre.  Yet  among  the  trees  the  air  was  still  exquisitely  fresh, 
the  sun  still  a  friend  to  be  welcomed.  The  light  morning  wind 
swept  the  open,  deserted  spaces  of  the  Gardens,  playing  merrily 
with  the  dust,  the  leaves,  the  fountains.  Meanwhile  on  all  sides 
the  stir  of  the  city  was  beginning,  mounting  slowly  and  steadily 
like  a  swelling  tone. 

On  a  bench  under  one  of  the  trees  in  the  Champs-Elyse'es  sat 
a  young  man  asleep.  He  had  thrown  himself  against  the  back  of 
the  bench,  his  cheek  resting  on  the  iron,  one  hand  on  his  knee. 
It  was  David  Grieve  ;  the  lad's  look  showed  that  his  misery  was 
still  with  him,  even  in  sleep. 

He  was  dreaming,  letting  fall  here  and  there  a  troubled  and 
disconnected  word.  In  his  dream  he  was  far  from  Paris — 
walking  after  his  sheep  among  the  heatiiery  slopes  of  the  Scout, 
climbing  towards  the  grey  smithy  among  the  old  mill-stones, 
watching  the  Red  Brook  slide  by  over  its  long,  shallow  steps  of 
orange  grit,  and  the  Downfall  oozing  and  trickling  among  its 
tumbled  blocks.  AY  ho  was  that  hanging  so  high  above  the  ravine 
on  that  treacherous  stone  that  rocked  with  the  least  touch  ?  Louie 
— mad  girl ! — come  back.  Ah  !  too  late — the  stone  rocks,  falls  ; 
he  leaps  from  block  to  block,  only  to  see  the  light  dress  disappear 
into  the  stony  gulf  below.  He  cries — struggles — wakes. 

He  sat  up,  wrestling  with  himself,  trying  to  clear  his  torpid 
brain.  Where  was  he  ?  His  dream-self  was  still  roaming  the 
Scout ;  his  outer  eye  was  bewildered  by  these  alleys,  these  orange- 
trees,  these  statues — that  distant  arch. 

Then  the  hideous,  undefined  cloud  that  was  on  him  took 
shape.  Eliso  had  left  him.  And  Louie,  too,  was  gone — he  knew 
not  where,  save  that  it  was  to  ruin.  When  he  had  arrived  the 
night  before  at  the  house  in  the  Rue  Chantal,  Madame  Merichat 
could  tell  him  nothing  of  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  who  had  not 
been  heard  of.  Then  he  asked,  his  voice  dying  in  his  throat 
before  the  woman's  hard  and  cynical  stare — the  stare  of  one  who 
found  the  chief  savour  of  life  in  the  misfortunes  of  her  kind — he 


360  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GFL.I'SVE          BOOK  m 

asked  for  his  sister  and  the  Cervins.  The  Cervins  were  staying 
at  Sevres  with  relations,  and  were  expected  home  again  in  a  day 
or  two  ;  Mademoiselle  Louie  ? — well,  Mademoiselle  Louie  was  not 
with  them.  Had  she  gone  back  to  England  ?  Mais  non !  A 
trunk  of  hers  was  still  in  the  Cervins'  vestibule.  Did  Madame 
Merichat  know  anything  about  her  ?  the  lad  asked,  forcing  him- 
self to  it,  his  blanched  face  turned  away.  Then  the  woman 
shrugged  her  shoulders  and  spoke  out. 

If  he  really  must  know,  she  thought  there  was  no  doubt  at  all 
that  where  Monsieur  Montjoie  was,  Mademoiselle  Louie  was  too. 
Monsieur  Montjoie  had  paid  the  arrears  of  his  rent  to  the  propriG- 
taire,  somehow  or  other,  and  had  then  made  a  midnight  flitting 
of  it  so  as  to  escape  other  creditors  who  were  tired  of  waiting  for 
his  statue  to  be  finished.  He  had  got  a  furniture  van  there  at 
night,  and  he  and  the  driver  and  her  husband  between  them  had 
packed  most  of  the  things  from  the  studio,  and  M.  Montjoie  had 
gone  off  in  the  van  about  one  o'clock  in  the  morning.  But  of 
course  she  did  not  know  his  address  !  she  said  so  half-a-dozen 
times  a  day  to  the  persons  who  called,  and  it  was  as  true  as 
gospel.  Why,  indeed,  should  M.  Montjoie  let  her  or  anyone  else 
know,  that  he  could  help  ?  He  had  gone  into  hiding  to  keep 
honest  people  out  of  their  money — that  was  what  it  meant. 

Well,  and  the  same  evening  Mademoiselle  Louie  also  dis- 
appeared. Madame  Cervin  had  been  in  a  great  way,  but  she  and 
mademoiselle  had  already  quarrelled  violently,  and  madame 
declared  that  she  had  no  fault  in  the  matter  and  that  no  one 
could  be  held  responsible  for  the  doings  of  such  a  minx.  She 
believed  that  madame  had  written  to  monsieur.  Monsieur  had 
never  received  if?  Ah,  well,  that  was  not  surprising  !  No  one 
could  ever  read  madame's  writing,  though  it  made  her  temper 
very  bad  to  tell  her  so. 

Could  he  have  Madame  Cervin's  address?  Certainly.  She 
wrote  it  out  for  him.  As  to  his  old  room  ? — no,  he  could  not  go 
back  to  it. 

Monsieur  Dubois  had  lately  come  back,  with  some  money 
apparently,  for  he  had  paid  his  loyer  just  as  the  landlord  was 
going  to  turn  him  out.  But  he  was  not  at  home. 

Then  she  looked  her  questioner  up  and  down,  with  a  cool, 
inhuman  curiosity  working  in  her  small  eyes.  So  M'selle  Elise 
had  thrown  him  over  already  ?  That  was  sharp  work  !  As  for 
the  rest  of  her  news,  her  pessimism  was  interested  in  observing 
his  demeanour  under  it.  Certainly  he  did  not  seem  to  take  it 
gaily ;  but  what  else  did  he  expect  with  his  sister  ? — '  Je  vous 
demande  ! ' 

The  young  man  dropped  his  head  and  went  out,  shrinking 
togethei  into  the  darkness.  She  called  her  husband  to  the  door, 
and  the  two  peered  after  him  into  the  lamp-lit  street,  dissecting 
him,  his  mistress,  and  his  sister  with  knifelike  tongues. 

David  went  away  and  walked  up  and  down  the  streets,  the 
quays,  the  bridges,  hour  after  hour,  feeling  no  fatigue,  till  sud- 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND   STRESS  361 

denly,  just  as  the  dawn  was  coming  on,  he  sank  heavily  on  to  the 
seat  in  the  Champs-Elyse'es.  The  slip  with  Madame  Cervin's 
address  on  it  dropped  unheeded  from  his  relaxing  hand.  His 
nervous  strength  was  gone,  and  he  had  to  sit  and  bear  his  anguish 
without  the  relief  of  frenzied  motion. 

Now,  after  his  hour's  sleep,  he  was  somewhat  revived,  ready 
to  start  again — to  search  again  ;  but  where  ?  whither  ?  Some- 
where in  this  vast,  sun-wrapped  Paris  was  Elise,  waking,  perhaps, 
at  this  moment  and  thinking  of  him  with  a  smile  and  a  tear.  He 
would  find  her,  come  what  would  ;  he  could  not  live  without  her  ! 

Then  into  his  wild  passion  of  loss  and  desire  there  slipped 
again  that  cold,  creeping  thought  of  Louie — ruined,  body  and 
soul — ruined  in  this  base  and  dangerous  Paris,  while  he  still  car- 
ried in  his  breast  that  little  scrap  of  scrawled  paper  !  And  why  ? 
Because  he  had  flung  her  to  the  wolves  without  a  thought,  that 
he  and  Elise  might  travel  to  their  goal  unchecked.  '  My  God  ! ' 

The  sense  of  some  one  near  him  made  him  look  up.  He  saw 
a  girl  stopping  near  the  seat  whom  in  his  frenzy  he  for  an  instant 
took  for  Louie.  There  was  the  same  bold,  defiant  carriage,  the 
same  black  hair  and  eyes.  He  half  rose,  with  a  cry. 

The  girl  gave  a  quick,  coarse  laugh.  She  had  been  hurrying 
across  the  Avenue  towards  the  nearest  bridge  when  she  saw  him  ; 
now  she  came  up  to  him  with  a  hideous  jest.  David  saw  her  face 
full,  caught  the  ghastly  suggestions  of  it — its  vice,  its  look  of 
mortal  illness  wrecking  and  blurring  the  cheap  prettiness  it  had 
once  possessed,  and  beneath  all  else  the  fierceness  of  the  hunted 
creature.  His  whole  being  rose  in  repulsion  ;  he  waved  her  away, 
and  she  went,  still  laughing.  But  his  guilty  mind  went  with  her, 
making  of  her  infamy  the  prophecy  and  foretaste  of  another's. 

He  hurried  on  again,  and  again  had  to  rest  for  faintness'  sake, 
while  the  furies  returned  upon  him.  It  seemed  as  though  every 
passer-by  were  there  only  to  scourge  and  torture  him  ;  or,  rather, 
out  of  the  moving  spectacle  of  human  life  which  began  to  flow 
past  him  with  constantly  increasing  fulness,  that  strange  selective 
poet-sense  of  his  chose  out  the  figures  and  incidents  which  bore 
upon  his  own  story  and  worked  into  his  own  drama,  passing  by 
the  rest.  A  group  of  persons  presently  attracted  him  who  had 
just  come  apparently  from  the  Rive  Gauche,  and  were  making 
for  the  Rue  Royale.  They  consisted  of  a  man,  a  woman,  and  a 
child.  The  child  was  a  tiny  creature  in  a  preposterous  feathered 
hat  as  large  as  itself.  It  had  just  been  put  down  to  walk  by  its 
father,  and  was  dragging  contentedly  at  its  mother's  hand,  suck- 
ing a  crust.  The  man  had  a  bag  of  tools  on  his  shoulder  and  was 
clearly  an  artisan  going  to  work.  His  wife's  face  was  turned  to 
him  and  they  were  talking  fast,  lingering  a  little  in  the  sunshine 
like  people  who  had  a  few  minutes  to  spare  and  were  enjoying 
them.  The  man  had  the  blanched,  unwholesome  look  of  the 
city  workman  who  lives  a  sedentary  life  in  foul  air,  and  was, 
moreover,  undersized  and  noways  attractive,  save  perhaps  for  the 
keen  amused  eyes  with  which  he  was  listening  to  his  wife's  chatter. 


362  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

The  great  bell  of  Notre-Dame  chimed  in  the  distance.  The 
man  straightened  himself  at  once,  adjusted  his  bag  of  tools,  and 
hurried  off,  nodding  to  his  wife. 

She  looked  after  him  a  minute,  then  turned  and  came  slowly 
along  the  alley  towards  the  bench  where  David  sat,  idly  watching 
her.  The  heat  was  growing  steadily,  the  child  was  heavy  on  her 
hand,  and  she  was  again  clearly  on  the  way  to  motherhood.  The 
seat  invited  her,  and  she  came  up  to  it. 

She  sat  down,  panting,  and  eyed  her  neighbour  askance,  de- 
tecting at  once  how  handsome  he  was,  and  how  unshorn  and 
haggard.  Before  he  knew  where  he  was,  or  how  it  had  begun, 
they  were  talking.  She  had  no  shyness  of  any  sort,  and,  as  it 
seemed  to  him,  a  motherly,  half-contemptuous  indulgence  for  his 
sex,  as  such,  which  fitted  oddly  with  her  young  looks.  Very  soon 
she  was  asking  him  the  most  direct  questions,  which  he  had  to 
parry  as  best  he  could.  She  made  out  at  once  that  he  was  a 
foreigner  and  in  the  book  trade,  and  then  she  let  him  know  by  a 
passing  expression  or  two  that  naturally  she  understood  why  he 
was  lounging  there  in  that  plight  at  that  hour  in  the  morning. 
He  had  been  keeping  gay  company,  of  course,  and  had  but  just 
emerged  from  some  nocturnal  orgie  or  other.  And  then  she 
shrugged  her  strong  shoulders  with  a  light,  pitiful  air,  as  though 
marvelling  once  more  for  the  thousandth  time  over  the  stupidity 
of  men  who  would  commit  these  idiocies,  would  waste  their  money 
and  health  in  them,  say  what  women  would. 

Presently  he  discovered  that  she  was  giving  him  advice  of 
different  kinds,  counselling  him  above  all  to  find  a  good  wife  who 
would  work  and  save  his  wages  for  him.  A  decent  marriage  was 
in  truth  an  economy,  though  young  men  would  never  believe  it. 

David  could  only  stare  at  her  in  return  for  her  counsels.  The 
difference  between  his  place  at  that  moment  in  the  human  comedy 
and  hers  was  too  great  to  be  explained;  it  called  only  for  silence 
or  a  stammering  commonplace  or  two.  Yet  for  a  few  moments 
the  neighbourhood  of  her  and  her  child  was  pleasant  to  him.  She 
had  a  good  comely  head,  which  was  bare  under  the  sun,  a  little 
shawl  crossed  upon  her  ample  bust,  and  a  market-basket  on  her 
arm.  The  child  was  playing  in  the  fine  gravel  at  her  feet,  pausing 
every  now  and  then  to  study  her  mother's  eye  with  a  furtive 
gravity,  while  the  hat  fell  back  and  made  a  still  more  fantastic 
combination  than  before  with  the  pensive  little  face. 

Presently,  tired  of  her  play,  she  came  to  stand  by  her  mother's 
knee,  laying  her  head  against  it. 

' Mon  petit  ange  !  que  tu  es  gentille!"1  said  the  mother  in  a 
low,  rapid  voice,  pressing  her  hand  on  the  child's  cheek.  Then, 
turning  back  to  David,  she  chattered  on  about  the  profit  and  loss 
of  married  life.  All  that  she  said  was  steeped  in  prose — in  the 
prose  especially  of  sous  and  francs;  she  talked  of  rents,  of  the 
price  of  food,  of  the  state  of  wages  in  her  husband's  trade.  Yet 
every  here  and  there  came  an  exquisite  word,  a  flash.  It  seemed 
that  she  had  been  very  ill  with  her  first  child.  She  did  not  mince 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND   STRESS  863 

matters  much  even  with  this  young  man,  and  David  gathered 
that  she  hud  not  only  been  near  dying,  but  that  her  illness  had 
made  a  moral  epoch  in  her  life.  She  was  laid  by  for  three  months; 
work  was  slack  for  her  husband  ;  her  own  earnings,  for  she  was  a 
skilled  enibroideress  working  for  a  great  linen-shop  in  the  Rue 
Vivienne,  were  no  longer  forthcoming.  Would  her  husband  put 
up  with  it,  with  the  worries  of  the  baby,  and  the  menage,  and  the 
sick  wife,  and  that  sharp  pinch  of  want  into  the  bargain,  from 
which  during  two  years  she  had  completely  protected  him  ? 

'I  cried  one  day,'  she  said  simply;  'I  said  to  him,  "You're 
just  sick  of  it,  ain't  you  ?  Well,  I'm  going  to  die.  Go  and 
shift  for  yourself,  and  take  the  baby  to  the  Enfants  Trouves. 
Alors—" ' 

She  paused,  her  homely  face  gently  lit  up  from  within.  '  He 
is  not  a  man  of  words — Jules.  lie  told  me  to  be  quiet,  called 
me  petite  sotte.  ' '  Haven't  you  slaved  for  two  years  ? "  he  said. 
"Well,  then,  lie  still,  can't  you? — faut  bien  que  cliacun  prenne 
son  lour  !  "  ' 

She  broke  off,  smiling  and  shaking  her  head.  Then  glancing 
round  upon  her  companion  again,  she  resumed  her  motherly 
sermon.  That  was  the  good  of  being  married ;  that  there  was 
some  one  to  share  the  bad  times  with,  as  well  as  the  good. 

'But  perhaps,'  she  inquired  briskly,  'you  don't  believe  in 
being  married  ?  You  are  for  Vunion  libre  ? ' 

She  spoke  like  one  touching  on  a  long  familiar  question — as 
much  a  question  indeed  of  daily  life  and  of  her  class  as  those 
other  matters  of  wages  and  food  she  had  been  discussing. 

A  slow  and  painful  red  mounted  into  the  Englishman's  cheek. 

'  I  don't  know,'  he  said  stupidly.     '  And  you  ? ' 

'  No,  no  ! '  she  said  emphatically,  twice,  nodding  her  head. 
'  Oh,  I  was  brought  up  that  way.  My  father  was  a  Red — an 
Anarchist — a  great  man  among  them  ;  he  died  last  year.  He 
said  that  liberty  was  everything.  It  made  him  mad  when  any  of 
his  friends  accepted  V union  legale — for  him  it  was  a  treason. 
He  never  married  my  mother,  though  he  was  faithful  to  her  all 
his  life.  But  for  me — '  she  paused,  shaking  her  head  slowly. 
'  Well,  I  had  an  elder  sister — that  says  everything.  Faut  pas 
en  parler  ;  it  makes  me  melancholy,  and  one  must  keep  up  one's 
spirits  when  one  is  like  this.  It  is  three  years  since  she  died ; 
she  was  my  father's  favourite.  When  they  buried  her — she  died 
in  the  hospital — I  sat  down  and  thought  a  little.  It  was  abomi- 
nable what  she  had  suffered,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "Why  ? "  ' 

The  child  swayed  backward  against  her  knee,  so  absorbed  was 
it  in  its  thumb  and  the  sky,  and  would  have  fallen  but  that  she 
caught  it  with  her  housewife's  hand,  being  throughout  mindful 
of  its  slightest  movement. 

'"Why?"  I  said.  She  was  a  good  creature — a  bit  foolish 
perhaps,  but  she  would  have  worked  the  shoes  off  her  feet  to 
please  anybody.  And  they  had  treated  her — but  like  a  dog  !  It 
bursts  one's  heart  to  think  of  it,  and  I  said  to  myself, — le 


364  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

mariage  c'est  la  justice  !  it  is  nothing  but  that.  It  is  not  what 
the  priests  say — oh  !  not  at  all.  But  it  strikes  me  like  that — c'est 
la  justice  ;  it  is  nothing  but  that ! ' 

And  she  looked  at  Mm  with  the  bright  fixed  eyes  of  one  whose 
thoughts  are  beyond  their  own  expressing.  He  interrupted  her, 
wondering  at  the  harsh  rapidity  of  his  own  voice.  '  But  if  it  is 
the  woman  who  will  be  free  ? — who  will  have  no  bond  ? ' 

Her  expression  changed,  became  shrewd,  inquisitive,  personal. 

'  "Well,  then  ! '  she  said  with  a  shrug,  and  paused.  '  It  is 
because  one  is  ignorant,  you  see,  or  one  is  bad — on  pent  tonjours 
$tre  une  coquine  !  And  one  forgets — one  thinks  one  can  be  always 
young,  and  love  is  all  pleasure — and  it  is  not  true  !  one  gets  old 
— and  there  is  the  child — and  one  may  die  of  it.' 

She  spoke  with  the  utmost  simplicity,  yet  with  a  certain 
intensity.  Evidently  she  had  a  natural  pride  in  her  philosophy 
of  life,  as  though  in  a  possession  of  one's  own  earning  and 
elaborating.  She  had  probably  expressed  it  often  before  in  much 
the  same  terms,  and  with  the  same  verbal  hitches  and  gaps. 

The  young  fellow  beside  her  rose  hastily,  and  bade  her  good 
morning.  She  looked  mildly  surprised  at  such  an  abrupt 
departure,  but  she  was  not  offended. 

'  Good  day,  citizen,'  she  said,  nodding  to  him.  '  I  disturb 
you?' 

He  muttered  something  and  strode  away. 

How  much  time  had  that  wasted  of  this  irrecoverable  day  that 
was  to  set  him  on  Elise's  track  once  more  !  The  first  post  had 
been  delivered  by  this  time.  Elise  must  either  return  to  her  studio 
or  remove  her  possessions  ;  anyhow,  sooner  or  later  the  Merichats 
must  have  information.  And"  if  they  were  forbidden  to  speak, 
well,  then  they  must  be  bribed. 

That  made  him  think  of  money,  and  in  a  sudden  panic  he 
turned  aside  into  a  small  street  and  examined  his  pockets. 
Nearly  four  napoleons  left,  after  allowing  for  his  debt  to  Madame 
Pyat,  which  must  be  paid  that  day.  Even  in  his  sick,  stunned 
state  of  the  evening  before,  when  he  was  at  last  staggering  on 
again,  after  his  fall,  to  the  Fontainebleau  station,  lie  had  remem- 
bered to  stop  a  Barbizon  man  whom  he  came  across  and  give  him 
a  pencilled  message  for  the  deserted  madame.  He  had  sent  her 
the  Kue  Chantal  address,  there  would  be  a  letter  from  her  this 
morning.  And  he  must  put  her  on  the  watch,  too — Elise  could 
not  escape  him  long. 

But  he  must  have  more  money.  He  looked  out  for  a  sta- 
tioner's shop,  went  in  and  wrote  a  letter  to  John,  which  he  posted 
at  the  next  post-office. 

It  was  an  incoherent  scrawl,  telling  the  lad  to  change  the 
cheque  he  enclosed  in  Bank  of  England  notes  and  send  them  to 
the  Rue  Chantal,  care  of  Madame  Merichat.  He  was  not  to 
expect  him  back  just  yet,  and  was  to  say  to  any  friend  who  might 
inquire  that  he  was  still  detained. 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND  STRESS  365 

That  letter,  with  the  momentary  contact  it  involved  with  his 
Manchester  life,  brought  down  upon  him  again  the  tiiought  of 
Louie.  But  this  time  he  flung  it  from  him  with  a  fierce  impa- 
tience. His  brain,  indeed,  was  incapable  of  dealing  with  it. 
Remorse  ?  rescue  ?  there  would  be  time  enough  for  that  by-and- 
by.  Meanwhile — to  find  Elise  ! 

And  for  a  week  he  spent  the  energies  of  every  thought  and 
every  moment  on  this  mad  pursuit.  Of  these  days  of  nightmare 
he  could  afterwards  remember  but  a  few  detached  incidents  here 
and  there. 

He  recollected  patrols  up  and  down  the  Rue  Chantal ;  talks 
with  Madame  Merichat ;  the  gleam  in  her  eyes  as  he  slipped  his 
profitless  bribes  into  her  hand  ;  visits  to  Taranne's  atelier,  where 
the  concierge  at  last  grew  suspicious  and  reported  the  matter 
within ;  and  finally  an  interview  with  the  artist  himself,  from 
which  the  English  youth  emerged  no  nearer  to  his  end  than 
before,  and  crushed  under  the  humiliation  of  the  great  man's 
advice.  He  could  vaguely  recall  the  long  pacings  of  the  Louvre ; 
the  fixed  scrutiny  of  face  after  face  ;  vain  chases ;  ignominious 
retreats  ;  and  all  the  wretched  stages  of  that  slow  descent  into  a 
bottomless  despair ! 

At  last  there  was  a  letter — the  long-expected  letter  to  Madame 
Merichat,  directing  the  removal  of  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  pos- 
sessions from  the  Rue  Chantal.  It  was  written  by  a  certain  M. 
Pimodan,  who  did  not  give  his  address,  but  who  declared  himself 
authorised  by  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  to  remove  her  effects,  and 
named  a  day  when  he  would  himself  superintend  the  process  and 
produce  his  credentials.  David  passed  the  time  after  the  arrival 
of  this  letter  in  a  state  of  excitement  which  left  him  hardly 
master  of  his  actions.  He  had  a  room  at  the  top  of  a  wretched 
little  hotel  close  to  the  Nord  station,  but  he  hardly  ate  or  slept. 
The  noises  of  Paris  were  agony  to  him  night  and  day  ;  he  lived  in 
a  perpetual  nausea  of  mind  and  body,  hardly  able  at  times  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  images  of  the  brain  and  the  impressions 
coming  from  without. 

Before  the  day  came,  a  note  was  brought  to  him  from  the  Rue 
Chantal.  It  was  from  M.  Pimodan,  and  requested  an  interview. 

'  I  should  be  glad  to  see  you  on  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
behalf.  Will  you  meet  me  in  the  Garden  of  the  Luxembourg 
in  front  of  the  central  pavilion,  at  three  o'clock  to-morrow  ? 

'  GUSTAVE  PIMODAN.  ' 

Before  the  hour  came  David  was  already  pacing  up  and  down 
the  blazing  gravel  in  front  of  the  Palace.  "When  M.  Pimodan 
came  the  Englishman  in  an  instant  recognised  the  cousin — the 
lanky  fellow  with  the  spectacles,  who  had  injured  his  eyes  by 
reading. 

As  soon  as  he  had  established  this  identification — and  the  two 


366  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ni 

men  had  hardly  exchanged  half-a-dozen  sentences  before  the  flash- 
ing inward  argument  was  complete — a  feeling  of  enmity  arose  in 
his  mind,  so  intense  that  he  could  hardly  keep  himself  still,  could 
hardly  bring  his  attention  to  bear  on  what  he  or  his  companion 
was  saying.  He  had  been  brought  so  low  that,  with  anyone  else, 
he  must  have  broken  into  appeals  and  entreaties.  With'  this  man 
—No! 

As  for  M.  Pimodan,  the  first  sight  of  the  young  Englishman 
had  apparently  wrought  in  him  also  some  degree  of  nervous 
shock ;  for  the  hand  which  held  his  cane  fidgeted  as  he  walked. 
He  had  the  air  of  a  person,  too,  who  had  lately  gone  through 
mental  struggle  ;  the  red  rims  of  the  eyes  under  their  large  spec- 
tacles might  be  due  either  to  chronic  weakness  or  to  recent  sleep- 
lessness. 

But  however  these  things  might  be,  he  took  a  perfectly  mild 
tone,  in  which  David's  sick  and  irritable  sense  instantly  detected 
the  note  of  various  offensive  superiorities — the  superiority  of 
class  and  the  superiority  of  age  to  begin  with.  He  said  in  the 
first  place  that  he  was  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  relative,  and  that 
she  had  commissioned  him  to  act  for  her  in  this  very  delicate 
matter.  She  was  well  aware — had  been  aware  from  the  first  day 
— that  she  was  watched,  and  that  M.  Grieve  was  moving  heaven 
and  earth  to  discover  her  whereabouts.  She  did  not,  however, 
intend  to  be  discovered  ;  let  him  take  that  for  granted.  In  her 
view  all  was  over — their  relation  was  irrevocably  at  an  end.  She 
wished  now  to  devote  herself  wholly  and  entirely  to  her  art,  with- 
out disturbance  or  distraction  from  any  other  quarter  whatever. 
Might  he,  under  these  circumstances,  give  M.  Grieve  the  advice 
of  a  man  of  the  world,  and  counsel  him  to  regard  the  matter  in 
the  same  light  ? 

David  walked  blindly  on,  playing  with  his  watch-chain.  In 
the  name  of  God  whom  and  what  was  this  fellow  talking  about  ? 
At  the  end  of  ten  minutes'  discourse  on  M.  Pimodan's  part,  and 
of  a  few  rare  monosyllables  on  his  own,  he  said,  straightening  his 
young  figure  with  a  nervous  tremor  : 

'  What  you  say  is  perfectly  useless — I  shall  find  her.' 

Then  a  sudden  angry  light  leapt  into  the  cousin's  eyes. 

'  You  will  not  find  her ! '  he  said,  drawing  a  sharp  breath. 
'  It  shows  how  little  you  know  her,  after  all — compared  with 
those  who —  No  matter  !  Oh,  you  can  persecute  and  annoy  her  ! 
No  one  doubts  that.  You  can  stand  between  her  and  all  that  she 
now  cares  to  live  for — her  art.  But  you  can  do  nothing  else; 
and  you  will  not  be  allowed  to  do  that  long,  for  she  is  not  alone, 
as  you  seem  to  think.  She  will  be  protected.  There  are  resources, 
and  we  shall  employ  them  ! ' 

The  cousin  had  gone  beyond  his  commission.  David  guessed 
as  much.  He  did  not  believe  that  Elise  had  set  this  man  on  to 
threaten  him.  What  a  fool !  But  he  merely  said  with  a  sarcastic 
dryness,  endeavouring  the  while  to  steady  his  parched  lips  and 
his  eyelids  swollen  with  weariness  •- 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND  STRESS  867 

'  A  la  bonne  Jieure  ! — employ  them.  Well,  sir,  you  know,  I 
believe,  where  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  is.  I  wish  to  know.  You 
will  not  inform  me.  I  therefore  pursue  my  own  way,  and  it  is 
useless  for  me  to  detain  you  any  longer. ' 

'  Know  where  she  is  ! '  cried  the  other,  a  triumphant  flash 
passing  across  his  sallow  student's  face  ;  '  I  have  but  just  parted 
from  her. ' 

But  he  stopped.  As  a  physician,  he  was  accustomed  to  notice 
the  changes  of  physiognomy.  Instinctively  he  put  some  feet  of 
distance  between  himself  and  his  companion.  Was  it  agony  or 
rage  he  saw  ? 

But  David  recovered  himself  by  a  strong  effort. 

'  Go  and  tell  her,  then,  that  I  shall  find  her,'  he  said  with  a 
shaking  voice.  '  I  have  many  things  to  say  to  her  yet. ' 

'  Absurd  ! '  cried  the  other  angrily.  '  Very  well,  sir,  we  know 
what  to  expect.  It  only  remains  for  us  to  take  measures  accord- 
ingly.' 

And  drawing  himself  up  he  walked  quickly  away,  looking 
back  every  now  and  then  to  see  whether  he  were  followed  or  no. 

'Supposing  I  did  track  him,'  thought  David  vaguely,  'what 
would  he  do  ?  Summon  one  of  the  various  gardiens  in  sight  ? ' 

He  had,  however,  no  such  intention.  What  could  it  have 
ended  in  but  a  street  scuffle  ?  Patience  1  and  he  would  find  Elise 
for  himself  in  spite  of  that  prater. 

Meanwhile  he  descended  the  terrace,  and  threw  himself,  worn 
out,  upon  the  first  seat,  to  collect  his  thoughts  again. 

Oh,  this  summer  beauty  : — this  festal  moment  of  the  great 
city !  Palace  and  Garden  lay  under  the  full  June  sun.  The 
clipped  trees  on  the  terraces,  statues,  alleys,  and  groves  slept  in 
the  luminous  dancing  air.  All  the  normal  stir  and  movement  of 
the  Garden  seemed  to  have  passed  to-day  into  the  leaping  and 
intermingling  curves  of  the  fountains ;  the  few  figures  passing 
and  repassing  hardly  disturbed  the  general  impression  of  heat 
and  solitude. 

For  hours  David  sat  there,  head  down,  his  eyes  on  the  gravel, 
his  hands  tightly  clasped  between  his  knees.  When  he  rose  at 
last  it  was  to  hurry  down  the  Hue  de  Seine  and  take  the  nearest 
bridge  and  street  northwards  to  the  Quartier  Montmartre.  He 
had  been  dreaming  too  long  !  and  yet  so  great  by  now  was  his 
confusion  of  mind  that  he  was  no  nearer  a  fresh  plan  of  opera- 
tions than  when  the  cousin  left  him. 

When  he  arrived  at  Madame  Merichat's  loge  it  was  to  find  that 
no  new  development  had  occurred.  Elise's  possessions  were  still 
untouched ;  neither  she  nor  M.  Pimodan  had  given  any  further 
sign.  The  concierge,  however,  gave  him  a  letter  which  had  just 
arrived  for  him.  Seeing  that  it  bore  the  Manchester  postmark, 
he  thrust  it  into  his  pocket  unread. 

When  he  entered  the  evil-smelling  passage  of  his  hotel,  a 
garcon  emerged  from  the  restaurant,  dived  into  the  salle  de 
lecture,  and  came  out  with  an  envelope,  which  he  gave  to  the 


868  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ra 

Englishman.  It  had  been  left  by  a  messenger  five  minutes  before 
monsieur  arrived.  David  took  it,  a  singing  in  his  ears  ;  mounted 
to  the  first  landing,  where  the  gas  burnt  at  midday,  and  read 
it. 

'  Gustave  tells  me  you  would  not  listen  to  him.  Do  you  want 
to  make  me  curse  our  meeting?  Be  a  man  and  leave  me  to 
myself  !  While  I  know  that  you  are  on  the  watch  I  shall  keep 
away  from  Paris — wild  tout.  I  shall  eat  my  heart  out, — I  shall 
begin  to  hate  you, — you  will  have  chosen  it  so.  Only  understand 
this  :  I  will  never  see  you  again,  for  both  our  sakes,  if  I  can  help 
it.  Believe  what  I  say — believe  that  what  parts  us  is  a  fate 
stronger  than  either  of  us,  and  go  !  Oh  !  you  men  talk  of  love — 
and  at  bottom  you  are  all  selfish  and  cruel.  Do  you  want  to 
break  me  more  than  I  am  already  broken  ?  Set  me  free  ! — will 
you  kill  both  my  youth  and  my  art  together  ? ' 

He  carefully  refolded  the  letter  and  put  it  into  its  envelope. 
Then  he  turned  and  went  downstairs  again  towards  the  street. 
But  the  same  frowsy  waiter  who  had  given  him  his  letter  was  on 
the  watch  for  him.  In  the  morning  monsieur  had  commanded 
some  dinner.  Would  he  take  it  now  ? 

The  man's  tone  was  sulky.  David  understood  that  he  was  not 
considered  a  profitable  customer  of  the  hotel — that,  considering 
his  queer  ways,  late  hours,  and  small  spendings,  they  would 
probably  be  glad  to  be  rid  of  him.  With  a  curious  submission 
and  shrinking  he  followed  the  man  into  the  stifling  restaurant 
and  sat  down  at  one  of  the  tables. 

Here  some  food  was  brought  to  him,  which  he  tried  to  eat. 
But  in  the  midst  of  it  he  was  seized  with  so  great  a  loathing,  that 
he  suddenly  rose,  so  violently  as  to  upset  a  plate  of  bread  beside 
him,  and  make  a  waiter  spring  forward  to  save  the  table  itself. 
He  pushed  his  way  to  the  glass-door  into  the  street,  totally  uncon- 
scious of  the  stir  his  behaviour  was  causing  among  the  stout 
women  in  bonnets  and  the  red-faced  men  with  napkins  tucked 
under  their  chins  who  were  dining  near,  fumbled  at  the  handle, 
and  tottered  out. 

'  Quel  animal ! '  said  the  enraged  dame  du  comptoir,  who  had 
noticed  the  incident.  '  Marie  ! ' — this  to  the  sickly  girl  who  sat 
near  with  the  books  in  front  of  her,  '  enter  that  plate,  and  charge 
it  high.  To-morrow  I  shall  raise  the  price  of  his  room.  One 
must  really  finish  with  him.  C?est  un  fou  ! ' 

Meanwhile  David,  revived  somewhat  by  the  air,  was  already 
in  the  Boulevard,  making  for  the  Opera  and  the  Rue  Royale.  It 
was  not  yet  seven,  the  Salon  would  be  still  open.  The  distances 
seemed  to  him  interminable — the  length  of  the  Rue  Royale,  the 
expanse  of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  the  gay  and  crowded  ways 
of  the  Champs-Elysees.  But  at  last  he  was  mounting  the  stairs 
and  battling  through  the  rooms  at  the  top.  He  looked  first  at 
the  larger  picture  which  had  gained  her  the  mention  honorable. 
It  was  a  study  of  factory  girls  at  their  work,  unequal,  impatient, 
but  full  of  a  warm  inventive  talent — full  of  her.  He  knew  its 


CHAP,  x  STORM   AND   STRESS  369 

history — the  small  difficulties  and  triumphs  of  it,  the  adventures 
she  had  gone  through  on  behalf  of  it — by  heart.  That  fair-haired 
girl  in  the  corner  was  studied  from  herself ;  the  tint  of  the  hair, 
the  curve  of  the  cheek  were  exact.  He  strained  his  eyes  to  look, 
searching  for  this  detail  and  that.  His  heart  said  farewell — that 
was  the  last,  the  nearest  he  should  ever  come  to  her  on  this  earth  ! 
Next  year  ?  Ah,  he  would  give  much  to  see  her  pictures  of  next 
year,  with  these  new  perceptions  she  had  created  in  him. 

He  stood  a  minute  bjefore  the  other  picture,  the  portrait — a 
study  from  one  of  her  comrades  in  the  atelier — and  then  he 
wound  his  way  again  through  the  thronged  and  suffocating  rooms, 
and  out  into  the  evening. 

The  excessive  heat  of  the  last  few  days  was  about  to  end  in 
storm.  A  wide  tempestuous  heaven  lay  beyond  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe  ;  the  red  light  struck  down  the  great  avenue  and  into 
the  faces  of  those  stepping  westwards.  The  deep  shade  under 
the  full-leafed  trees — how  thinly  green  they  were  still  against  the 
sky  that  day  when  she  vanished  from  him  beside  the  arch  and 
their  love  began  ! — was  full  of  loungers  and  of  playing  children  ; 
the  carriages  passed  and  repassed  in  the  light.  So  it  had  been, 
the  enchanting  never-ending  drama,  before  this  spectator  entered 
— so  it  would  be  when  he  had  departed. 

He  turned  southwards  and  found  himself  presently  on  the 
Quai  de  la  Conference,  hanging  over  the  river  in  a  quiet  spot 
where  few  people  passed. 

His  frenzy  of  will  was  gone,  and  his  last  hope  with  it.  Elise 
had  conquered.  Her  letter  had  brought  him  face  to  face  with 
those  realities  which,  during  this  week  of  madness,  he  had  simply 
refused  to  see.  He  could  pit  himself  against  her  no  longer. 
When  it  came  to  the  point  he  had  not  the  nerve  to  enter  upon  a 
degrading  and  ignoble  conflict,  in  which  all  that  was  to  be  won 
was  her  hatred  or  her  fear.  That,  indeed,  would  be  the  last  and 
worst  ruin,  for  it  would  be  the  ruin,  not  of  happiness  or  of  hope, 
but  of  love  itself,  and  memory. 

He  took  out  her  letter  and  re-read  it.  Then  he  searched  for 
some  of  the  writing  materials  he  had  bought  when  he  had  written 
his  last  letter  to  Manchester,  and,  spreading  a  sheet  on  the  parapet 
of  the  river  wall,  he  wrote  : 

'  Be  content.  I  think  now — I  am  sure — that  we  shall  never 
meet  again.  From  this  moment  you  will  be  troubled  with  me  no 
more.  Only  I  tell  you  for  the  last  time  that  you  have  done  ill — 
irrevocably  ill.  For  what  you  have  slain  in  yourself  and  me  is 
not  love  or  happiness,  but  life  itself — the  life  of  life  ! ' 

Foolish,  incoherent  words,  as  they  seemed  to  him,  but  he 
could  find  no  better.  Confusedly  and  darkly  they  expressed  the 
cry,  the  inmost  conviction  of  his  being.  He  could  come  no 
nearer  at  any  rate  to  that  desolation  at  the  heart  of  him. 

But  now  what  next  ?  Manchester  ? — the  resumption  and 
expansion  of  his  bookseller's  life — the  renewal  of  his  old  friend- 
ships— the  pursuit  of  money  and  of  knowledge  ? 


370  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

No.  That  is  all  done.  The  paralysis  of  will  is  complete.  He 
cannot  drive  himself  home,  back  to  the  old  paths. .  The  disgust 
with  life  has  sunk  too  deep — the  physical  and  moral  collapse  of 
which  he  is  conscious  has  gone  too  far. 

'  Wretched  man  that  I  am  !  ^vho  shall  deliver  me  from  the 
body  of  this  death  ? ' 

There,  deep  in  the  fibre  of  memory  lie  these  words,  and  others 
like  them — the  typical  words  of  a  religion  which  is  still  in  some 
sense  the  ineradicable  warp  of  his  nature,  as  it  had  been  for 
generations  of  his  forefathers.  His  individual  resources  of  speech, 
as  it  were,  have  been  overpassed ;  he  falls  back  upon  the  in- 
herited, the  traditional  resources  of  his  race. 

He  looked  up.  A  last  gleam  was  on  the  Invalides — on  the 
topmost  roof  of  the  Corps  Legislatif  ;  otherwise  the  opposite  bank 
was  already  grey,  the  river  lay  in  shade.  But  the  upper  air  was 
still  aglow  with  the  wide  flame  and  splendour  of  the  sunset ;  and 
beneath,  on  the  bridges  and  the  water  and  the  buildings,  how 
clear  and  gracious  was  the  twilight ! 

'  Who  shall  deliver  me  ?  '  '  Deliver  thyself ! '  One  instant, 
and  the  intolerable  pressure  on  this  shrinking  point  of  conscious- 
ness can  -be  lightened,  this  hunger  for  sleep  appease'd  !  Nothing 
else  is  possible — no  future  is  even  conceivable.  His  life  in 
flowering  has  exhausted  and  undone  itself,  so  spendthrift  has 
been  the  process. 

So  he  took  his  resolve.  Then,  already  calmed,  he  hung  over 
the  river,  thinking,  reviewing  the  past. 

Six  weeks — six  weeks  only  ! — yet  nothing  in  his  life  before 
matters  or  counts  by  comparison.  For  tliis  mood  of  deadly 
fatigue  the  remembrance  of  all  the  intellectual  joys  and  conquests 
of  the  last  few  years  has  no  savour  whatever.  Strange  that  the 
development  of  one  relation  of  life — the  relation  of  passion — 
should  have  been  able  so  to  absorb  and  squander  the  power  of 
living  !  His  fighting,  enduring  capacity,  compared  with  that  of 
other  men,  must  be  small  indeed.  He  thinks  of  himself  as  a 
coward  and  a  weakling.  But  neither  the  facts  of  the  present  nor 
the  face  of  the  future  are  altered  thereby. 

The  relation  of  sex — in  its  different  phases — as  he  sees  the 
world  at  this  moment,  there  is  no  other  reality.  The  vile  and 
hideous  phase  of  it  has  been  present  to  him  from  the  first  moment 
of  his  arrival  in  these  Paris  streets.  He  thinks  of  the  pictures 
and  songs  at  the  '  Trois  Rats '  from  which  in  the  first  delicacy 
and  flush  of  passion  he  had  shrunk  with  so  deep  a  loathing ;  of 
the  photographs  and  engravings  in  the  shops  and  the  books  on 
the  stalls  ;  of  some  of  those  pictures  he  had  passed,  a  few  minutes 
before,  in  the  Salon  ;  of  that  girl's  face  in  the  Tuilcries  Gardens. 
The  animal,  the  beast  in  human  nature,  never  has  it  been  so 
present  to  him  before  ;  for  he  has  understood  and  realised  it 
while  loathing  it,  has  been  admitted  by  his  own  passion  to  those 
regions  of  human  feeling  where  all  that  is  most  foul  and  all  that 
is  most  beautiful  are  generated  alike  from  the  elemental  forces  of 


CHAP,  x  STORM  AND   STRESS  371 

life.  And  because  he  had  loved  Elise  so  finely  and  yet  so  humanly, 
with  a  boy's  freshness  and  a  man's  energy,  this  animalism  of  the 
great  city  had  been  to  him  a  perpetual  nightmare  and  horror.  His 
whole  heart  had  gone  into  Kegnault's  cry — into  Regnault's  protest. 
For  his  own  enchanted  island  had  seemed  to  him  often  in  the 
days  of  his  wooing  to  be  but  floating  on  the  surface  of  a  ghastly 
sea,  whence  emerged  all  conceivable  shapes  of  ruin,  mockery, 
terror,  and  disease.  It  was  because  of  the  tremulous  adoration 
which  filled  him  from  the  beginning  that  the  vice  of  Paris  had 
struck  him  in  this  tragical  way.  At  another  time  it  might  have 
been  indifferent  to  him,  might  even  have  engulfed  him. 

But  he  ! — he  had  known  the  best  of  passion  !  He  laid  his  head 
down  on  the  wall,  and  lived  Barbizon  over  again — day  after  day, 
night  after  night.  Now  for  the  first  time  there  is  a  pause  in  the 
urging  madness  of  his  despair.  All  the  pulses  of  his  being 
slacken ;  he  draws  back  as  it  were  from  his  own  fate,  surveys  it 
as  a  whole,  separates  himself  from  it.  The  various  scenes  of  it 
succeed  each  other  in  memory,  set  always — incomparably  set — in 
the  spring  green  of  the  forest,  or  under  a  charmed  moonlight,  or 
amid  the  flowery  detail  of  a  closed  garden.  Her  little  figure 
flashes  before  him — he  sees  her  gesture,  her  smile  ;  he  hears  his 
own  voice  and  hers  ;  recalls  the  struggle  to  express,  the  poverty 
of  words,  the  thrill  of  silence,  and  that  perpetual  and  exquisite 
recurrence  to  the  interpreting  images  of  poetry  and  art.  But  no 
poet  had  imagined  better,  had  divined  more  than  they  in  those 
earliest  hours  had  lived  !  So  he  had  told  her,  so  he  insisted  now 
with  a  desperate  faith. 

But,  poor  soul !  even  as  he  insists,  the  agony  within  rises, 
breaks  up,  overwhelms  the  picture.  He  lives  again  through  the 
jars  and  frets  of  those  few  burning  days,  the  growing  mistrust  of 
them,  the  sense  of  jealous  terror  and  insecurity — and  then  through 
the  anguish  of  desertion  and  loss.  He  writhes  again  under  the 
wrenching  apart  of  their  half-fused  lives — under  this  intolerable 
ache  of  his  own  wound. 

TJiis  the  best  of  passion  !  Why  his  whole  soul  is  still  athirst  and 
ahungered.  Not  a  single  craving  of  it  has  been  satisfied.  What 
is  killing  him  is  the  sense  of  a  thwarted  gift,  a  baffled  faculty — 
the  faculty  of  self -spending,  self-surrender.  This,  the  best  ? 

Then  the  mind  fell  into  a  whirlwind  of  half-articulate  debate, 
from  the  darkness  of  which  emerged  two  scenes — fragments — set 
clear  in  a  passing  light  of  memory. 

That  workman  and  his  wife  standing  together  before  the  day's 
toil — the  woman's  contented  smile  as  her  look  clung  to  the  mean 
departing  figure. 

And  far,  far  back  in  his  boyish  life — Margaret  sitting  beside 
'Lias  in  the  damp  autumn  dawn,  spending  on  his  dying  weakness 
that  exquisite,  ineffable  passion  of  tenderness,  of  pity. 

Ah  !  from  the  very  beginning  he  had  been  in  love  with  loving. 
He  drew  the  labouring  breath  of  one  who  has  staked  his  all  for 
some  long-coveted  gain,  and  lost. 


372  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

Well ! — Mr.  Ancrum  may  be  right — the  English  Puritan  may 
be  right — '  sin '  and  '  law '  may  have  after  all  some  of  those 
mysterious  meanings  his  young  analysis  had  impetuously  denied 
them — he  and  Elise  may  have  been  only  dashing  themselves 
against  the  hard  facts  of  the  world's  order,  while  they  seemed  to 
be  transcending  the  common  lot  and  spurning  the  common  ways. 
What  matter  now  !  A  certain  impatient  defiance  rises  in  his 
stricken  soul.  He  has  made  shipwreck  of  this  one  poor  oppor- 
tunity of  life — confessed  !  now  let  the  God  behind  it -punish,  if 
God  there  be.  '  The  rest  is  silence."1  With  Elise  in  his  arms,  he 
had  grasped  at  immortality.  Now  a  stubborn,  everlasting  '  Nay ' 
possesses  him.  There  is  nothing  beyond. 

He  gathered  up  his  letter,  folded  it,  and  put  it  into  the  breast- 
pocket of  his  coat.  But  in  doing  so  his  fingers  touched  once  more 
the  ragged  edges  of  a  bit  of  frayed  paper. 

Louie  ! 

Through  all  these  half -sane  days  and  nights  he  had  never  once 
thought  of  his  sister.  She  had  passed  out  of  his  life — she  had 
played  no  part  even  in  the  nightmares  of  his  dreams. 

But  now ! — while  that  intense  denial  of  any  reality  in  the 
universe  beyond  and  behind  this  masque  of  life  and  things  was 
still  vibrating  through  his  deepest  being,  it  was  as  though  a  hand 
gently  drew  aside  a  curtain,  and  there  grew  clear  before  him, 
slowly  effacing  from  his  eyes  the  whole  grandiose  spectacle  of 
buildings,  sky,  and  river,  that  scene  of  the  past  which  had  worked 
so  potently  both  in  his  childish  sense  and  in  Reuben's  maturer 
conscience — the  bare  room,  the  iron  bed,  the  dying  man,  one  child 
within  his  arm,  the  other  a  frightened  baby  beside  him. 

It  was  frightfully  clear,  clearer  than  it  had  ever  been  in  any 
normal  state  of  brain,  and  as  his  mind  lingered  on  it,  uncon- 
sciously shaping,  deepening  its  own  creation,  the  weird  impression 
grew  that  the  helpless  figure  amid  the  bedclothes  rose  on  its  elbow, 
opened  its  cavernous  eyes,  and  looked  at  him  face  to  face,  at  the 
son  whose  childish  heart  had  beat  against  his  father's  to  the  last. 
The  boy's  tortured  soul  quailed  afresh  before  the  curse  his  own 
remorse  called  into  those  eyes. 

He  hung  over  the  water  pleading  with  the  phantom — defend- 
ing himself.  Every  now  and  then  he  found  that  he  was  speaking 
aloud  ;  then  he  would  look  round  with  a  quick,  piteous  terror  to 
see  whether  he  had  been  heard  or  no,  the  parched  lips  beginning 
to  move  again  almost  before  his  fear  was  soothed. 

All  his  past  returned  upon  him,  with  its  obligations,  its  fetters 
of  conscience  and  kinship,  so  slowly  forged,  so  often  resisted 
and  forgotten,  and  yet  so  strong.  The  moment  marked  the 
first  passing  away  of  the  philtre,  but  it  brought  no  recovery 
with  it. 

'  My  God  !  my  God  !  I  tried,  father — /  tried.  But  she  is 
lost,  lost — as  lam  !  ' 

Then  a  thought  found  entrance  and  developed.  He  walked 
up  and  down  the  quay,  wrestling  it  out,  returning  slowly  and 


CHAP,  xi  STORM  AND   STRESS  373 

with  enormous  difficulty,  because  of  his  physical  state,  to  some  of 
the  normal  estimates  and  relations  of  life. 

At  last  he  dragged  himself  off  towards  his  hotel.  He  must 
have  some  sleep,  or  how  could  these  hours  that  yet  remained  be 
lived  through — his  scheme  carried  out  ? 

On  the  way  he  went  into  a  shop  still  open  on  the  boulevard. 
"When  he  came  out  he  thrust  his  purchase  into  his  pocket,  but- 
toned his  coat  over  it,  and  pursued  his  way  northwards  with  a 
brisker  step. 

CHAPTER  XI 

Two  days  afterwards  David  stood  at  the  door  of  a  house  in  the 
outskirts  of  the  Auteuil  district  of  Paris.  The  street  had  a  half- 
finished,  miscellaneous  air ;  new  buildings  of  the  villa  type  were 
mixed  up  with  old  and  dingy  houses  standing  in  gardens,  which 
had  been  evidently  overtaken  by  the  advancing  stream  of  Paris, 
having  once  enjoyed  a  considerable  amount  of  country  air  and 
space. 

It  was  at  the  garden  gate  of  one  of  these  older  houses  that 
David  rang,  looking  about  him  the  while  at  the  mean  irregular 
street  and  the  ill-kept  side-walks  with  their  heaps  of  cinders  and 
refuse. 

A  powerfully  built  woman  appeared,  scowling,  in  answer  to 
the  bell.  At  first  she  flatly  refused  the  new-comer  admission. 
But  David  was  prepared.  He  set  to  work  to  convince  her  that  he 
was  not  a  Paris  creditor,  and,  further,  that  he  was  well  aware  M. 
Montjoie  was  not  at  home,  since  he  had  passed  him  on  the  other 
side  of  the  road,  apparently  hurrying  to  the  railway  station,  only 
a  few  minutes  before.  He  desired  simply  to  see  madame.  At 
this  the  woman's  expression  changed  somewhat.  She  showed, 
however,  no  immediate  signs  of  letting  him  in,  being  clearly 
chosen  and  paid  to  be  a  watch-dog.  Then  David  brusquely  put 
his  hand  in  his  pocket.  Somehow  he  must  get  this  harridan  out 
of  the  way  at  once  1  The  same  terror  was  upon  him  that  had 
been  upon  him  now  for  many  days  and  nights — of  losing  com- 
mand of  himself,  of  being  no  more  able  to  do  what  he  had  to  do. 

The  creature  studied  him,  put  out  a  greedy  palm,  developed  a 
smile  still  more  repellent  than  her  brutality,  and  let  him  in. 

He  found  himself  in  a  small,  neglected  garden  ;  in  front  of 
him,  to  the  right,  a  wretched,  weather-stained  house,  bearing 
every  mark  of  poverty  and  dilapidation,  while  to  the  left  there 
stretched  out  from  the  house  a  long  glass  structure,  also  in  miser- 
able condition — a  sculptor's  studio,  as  he  guessed. 

His  guide  led  him  to  the  studio-door.  Madame  was  there  a 
few  minutes  ago.  As  they  approached,  David  stopped. 

'  I  will  knock.  You  may  go  back  to  the  house.  I  am 
madame's  brother.' 

She  looked  at  him  once  more,  reluctant.  Then,  in  the  clearer 
light  of  the  garden,  the  likeness  of  the  face  to  one  she  already 


374  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

knew  struck  her  with  amazement ;  she  turned  and  went  off, 
muttering. 

David  knocked  at  the  door ;  there  was  a  movement  within, 
and  it  was  cautiously  opened. 

'  Monsieur  est  aorti. — You  ! ' 

The  brother  and  sister  were  face  to  face. 

David  closed  the  door  behind  him,  and  Louie  retreated  slowly, 
her  hands  behind  her,  her  tall  figure  drawing  itself  up,  her  face 
setting  into  a  frowning  scorn. 

'  You  ! — what  are  you  here  for  ?  We  have  done  with  each 
other ! ' 

For  answer  David  went  up  to  a  stove  which  was  feebly  burn- 
ing in  the  damp,  cheerless  place,  put  down  his  hat  and  stick,  and 
bent  over  it,  stretching  out  his  hands  to  the  warmth.  A  chair  was 
beside  it,  and  on  the  chair  some  scattered  bits  of  silk  and  velvet, 
out  of  which  Louie  was  apparently  fashioning  a  hat. 

She  stood  still,  observing  him.  She  was  in  a  loose  dress  of 
some  silky  Oriental  material,  and  on  her  black  hair  she  wore  a 
red  close-fitting  cap  with  a  fringe  of  golden  coins  dropping 
lightly  and  richly  round  her  superb  head  and  face. 

'  What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? '  she  asked  him  grimly,  after  a 
minute's  silence.  '  She  has  left  you — that's  plain  ! ' 

The  young  man  involuntarily  threw  back  his  head  as  though 
he  had  been  struck,  and  a  vivid  colour  rushed  into  his  cheek. 
But  he  answered  quickly  : 

,  'We  need  not  discuss  my  affairs.  I  did  not  come  here  to 
speak  of  them.  They  are  beyond  mending.  I  came  to  see — 
before  I  go — whether  there  is  anything  I  can  do  to  help  you. ' 

'  Much  obliged  to  you  ! '  she  cried,  flinging  herself  down  on 
the  edge  of  a  rough  board  platform,  whereon  stood  a  fresh  and 
vigorous  clay-study,  for  which  she  had  just  been  posing,  to  judge 
from  her  dress.  Beyond  was  the  Maenad.  And  in  the  distance 
loomed  a  great  block  of  marble,  upon  which  masons  had  been 
working  that  afternoon. 

'  I  am  greatly  obliged  to  you  ! '  she  repeated  mockingly, 
taking  the  crouching  attitude  of  an  animal  ready  to  attack.  '  You 
are  a  pattern  brother.' 

Her  glowing  looks  expressed  the  enmity  and  contempt  she  was 
at  the  moment  too  excited  to  put  into  words. 

David  drew  his  hand  across  his  eyes  with  a  long  breath.  How 
was  he  to  get  through  it,  this  task  of  his,  with  this  swollen,  aching 
brain  and  these  trembling  limbs  ?  Louie  must  let  him  speak  ;  he 
bitterly  felt  his  physical  impotence  to  wrestle  with  her. 

He  went  up  to  her  slowly  and  sat  down  beside  her.  She  drew 
away  from  him  with  a  violent  movement.  But  he  laid  his  hand 
upon  her  knee — a  shaking  hand  which  his  impatient  will  tried 
in  vain  to  steady. 

'  Louie,  look  at  me  ! '  he  commanded. 

She  did  so  unwillingly,  but  the  proud  repulsion  of  her  lip  did 
not  relax. 


CHAP,  xi  STORM  AND   STRESS  375 

'  Well,  I  dare  say  you  look  pretty  bad.  Whose  fault  is  it  ? 
everybody  else  but  you  knew  what  the  creature  was  worth.  Ask 
anybody ! ' 

The  lad's  frame  straightened  and  steadied.  He  took  his  hand 
from  her  knee. 

'  Say  that  kind  of  thing  again,'  he  said  calmly,  '  and  I  walk 
straight  out  of  that  door,  and  you  set  eyes  on  me  for  the  last  time. 
That  would  be  what  you  want,  I  dare  say.  All  I  wish  to  point 
out  is,  that  you  would  be  a  great  fool.  I  have  not  come  here  to- 
day to  waste  words,  but  to  propose  something  to  your  advantage 
— your  money-advantage,'  he  repeated  deliberately,  looking  round 
the  dismal  building  with  its  ill-mended  gaps  and  rents,  and  its 
complete  lack  of  the  properties  and  appliances  to  which  the 
humblest  modern  artist  pretends.  '  To  judge  from  what  I  heard 
in  Paris,  and  what  I  see,  money  is  scarce  here.' 

His  piteous  sudden  wish  to  soften  her,  to  win  a  kind  word 
from  her,  from  anyone,  had  passed  away.  He  was  beginning  to 
take  command  of  her  as  in  the  old  days. 

'  Well,  maybe  we  are  hard  up,'  she  admitted  slowly.  '  People 
are  such  brutes  and  won't  wait,  and  a  sculptor  has  to  pay  out 
for  a  lot  of  things  before  he  can  make  anything  at  all.  But  that 
statue  will  put  it  all  right,'  and  she  pointed  behind  her  to  the 
Maenad.  '  It's  me — it's  the  one  you  tried  to  put  a  stopper  on.' 

She  looked  at  him  darkly  defiant.  She  was  leaning  back  on 
one  arm,  her  foot  beating  with  the  trick  familiar  to  her.  For 
reckless  and  evil  splendour  the  figure  was  unsurpassable. 

'  When  he  sells  that,'  she  went  on,  seeing  that,  he  did  not 
answer,  '  and  he  will  sell  it  in  a  jiffy — it  is  the  best  he's  ever  done 
— there'll  be  heaps  of  money. ' 

David  smiled. 

'For  a  week  perhaps.  Then,  if  I  understand  this  business 
aright — I  have  been  doing  my  best,  you  perceive,  to  get  informa- 
tion, and  M.  Montjoie  seems  to  be  better  known  than  one 
supposed  to  half  Paris — the  game  will  begin  again.' 

'Never  you  mind,'  she  broke  in,  breathing  quickly.  'Give 
me  my  money — the  money  that  belongs  to  me — and  let  me 
alone. ' 

'  On  one  condition,'  he  said  quietly.  '  That  money,  as  you 
remember,  is  in  my  hands  and  at  my  disposal.' 

'  Ah  !  I  supposed  you  would  try  to  grab  it  ! '  she  cried. 

Even  he  was  astonished  at  her  violence — her  insolence.  The 
demon  in  her  had  never  been  so  plain,  the  woman  never  so 
effaced.  His  heart  di'opped  within  him  like  lead,  and  his  whole 
being  shrank  from  her. 

'  Listen  to  me  1 '  he  said,  seizing  her  strongly  by  the  hand, 
while  a  light  of  wrath  leapt  into  his  changed  and  bloodshot  eyes. 
'  This  man  will  desert  you  ;  in  a  year's  time  he  will  have  tired  of 
you  ;  what'll  you  do  then  ? ' 

'  Manage  for  myself,  thank  you  !  without  any  canting  inter- 
ference from  you.  I  have  had  enough  of  that.' 


376  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

'  And  fall  again,'  he  said,  releasing  her,  and  speaking  with  a 
deliberate  intensity  ;  '  fall  again — from  infamy  to  infamy  ! ' 

She  sprang  up. 

'  Mind  yourself  ! '  she  cried. 

Miserable  moment !  As  he  looked  at  her  he  felt  that  that 
weapon  of  his  old  influence  with  her  which,  poor  as  it  was,  he  had 
relied  on  in  the  last  resort  all  his  life,  had  broken  in  his  hand. 
His  own  act  had  robbed  it  of  all  virtue.  That  pang  of  '  irrepa- 
rableness'  which  had  smitten  Elisa  smote  him  now.  All  was 
undone — all  was  done  ! 

He  buried  his  face  in  his  hands  an  instant.  When  he  lifted  it 
again,  she  was  standing  with  her  arms  folded  across  her  chest, 
leaning  against  an  iron  shaft  which  supported  part  of  the  roof. 

'  You  had  better  go  ! '  she  said,  still  in  a  white  heat.  '  Why 
you  ever  came  I  don't  know.  If  you  won't  give  me  that  money, 
I  shall  get  it  somehow.' 

Suddenly,  as  she  spoke,  everything — the  situation,  the  subject 
of  their  talk,  the  past — seemed  to  be  wiped  out  of  David's  brain. 
He  stared  round  him  helplessly.  Why  were  they  there — what 
had  happened  ? 

This  blankness  lasted  a  certain  number  of  seconds.  Then  it 
passed  away,  and  he  painfully  recovered  his  identity.  But  the 
experience  was  not  new  to  him — it  would  recur — let  him  be 
quick. 

This  time  a  happier  instinct  served  him.  He,  too,  rose  and 
went  up  to  her. 

'  We  are  a  pair  of  fools,'  he  said  to  her,  half  bitterly,  half 
gently ;  '  we  reproach  and  revile  each  other,  and  all  the  time  I 
am  come  to  give  you  not  only  what  is  yours,  but  all — all  I  have — • 
that  it  may  stand  between  you  and — and  worse  ruin. ' 

'  Ruin  ! '  she  said,  throwing  back  her  head  and  catching  at  the 
word  ;  '  speak  for  yourself  !  If  I  am  Montjoie's  mistress,  Elise 
Delaunay  was  yours.  Don't  preach.  It  won't  go  down.' 

'  I  have  no  intention  of  preaching — don't  alarm  yourself,'  he 
replied  quietly,  this  time  controlling  himself  without  difficulty. 
'  I  have  only  this  to  say.  On  the  day  when  you  become  Montjoie's 
wife,  all  our  father's  money — all  the  six  hundred  pounds  Mr. 
Gurney  paid  over  to  me  in  January,  shall  be  paid  to  you.' 

She  started,  caught  her  breath,  tried  to  brazen  it  out. 

'  What  is  this  idiocy  for  ? '  she  asked  coldly.  '  What  does 
marrying  matter  to  you  ? ' 

He  sank  down  again  on  the  chair  by  the  stove,  being,  indeed, 
unable  to  stand. 

'  Perhaps  I  can't  tell  you,'  he  said,  after  a  pause,  shading  his 
face  from  her  with  his  hand  ;  '  perhaps  I  could  not  make  plain  to 
myself  what  I  feel.  But  this  I  know — that  this  man  with  whom 
you  are  living  here  is  a  man  for  whom  nobody  has  a  good  word. 
I  want  to  give  you  a  hold  over  him.  But  first  ! — stop  a  moment,' 
— he  dropped  his  hand  and  looked  up  eagerly,  '  will  you  leave 
him — leave  him  at  once  ?  I  could  arrange  that.' 


CHAP,  xi  STORM   AND   STRESS  877 

'  Make  your  mind  easy,'  she  said  shortly  ;  '  he  suits  me — I 
stay.  I  went  with  him,  well,  because  I  was  dull — arid  because  I 
wanted  to  make  you  smart  for  it,  if  you're  keen  to  know  ! — but  if 
you  think  I  am  anxious  to  go  home,  to  be  cried  over  by  Dora  and 
lectured  by  you,  you're  vastly  mistaken.  I  can  manage  him  !  I 
have  my  hold  on  him — he  knows  very  well  what  I  am  worth  to 
him.' 

She  threw  her  head  back  superbly  against  the  iron  shaft, 
putting  one  arm  round  it  and  resting  her  hot  cheek  against  it  as 
though  for  coolness. 

'  Why  should  we  argue  ? '  he  said  sharply — after  a  wretched 
silence.  '  I  didn't  come  for  that.  If  you  won't  leave  him  I  have 
only  this  to  say.  On  the  day  he  marries  you,  if  the  evidence  of 
the  marriage  is  satisfactory  to  an  English  lawyer  I  have  dis- 
covered in  Paris  and  whose  address  I  will  give  you,  six  hundred 
pounds  will  be  paid  over  to  you.  It  is  there  now,  in  the  lawyer's 
hands.  If  not,  I  go  home,  and  the  law  does  not  compel  me  to 
hand  you  over  one  farthing.' 

She  was  silent,  and  began  to  pace  up  and  down. 

'  Montjoie  despises  marriage,'  she  said  presently. 

'Try  whether  he  despises  money  too,'  said  David,  and  could 
not  for  the  life  of  him  keep  the  sarcastic  note  out  of  his  voice. 

She  bit  her  lip. 

1  And  when,  if  it  is  done,  must  this  precious  thing  be 
settled?' 

'  If  your  marriage  does  not  take  place  within  a  month,  Mr. 
O'Kelly — I  will  leave  you  his  address,'  he  put  his  hand  into  his 
pocket — '  has  orders  to  return  the  money — 

'  To  whom  ? '  she  inquired,  struck  by  his  sudden  break. 

'  To  me,  of  course,'  he  said  slowly.  '  Is  it  perfectly  plain  ?  do 
you  understand  ?  Now,  then,  listen.  I  have  inquired  what  the 
law  is — you  will  have  to  be  married  both  at  the  mairie  and  by  the 
chaplain  at  the  British  embassy.' 

She  stopped  suddenly  in  her  walk  and  confronted  him. 

'  If  I  am  married  at  all,'  she  said  abruptly,  '  I  shall  be  married 
as  a  Catholic.' 

'  A  Catholic  ! '  David  stared  at  her.  She  enjoyed  his  asto- 
nishment. 

'  Oh,  I  have  had  that  in  my  mind  for  a  long  time,'  she  said 
scornfully.  '  There  is  a  priest  at  that  church  with  the  steps,  you 
know,  near  that  cemetery  place  on  the  hill,  who  is  very  much 
interested  in  me  indeed.  He  speaks  English.  I  used  to  go  to 
confession.  Madame  Cervin  told  me  all  about  it,  and  how  to  do 
it ;  I  did  it  exact !  Oh,  if  I  am  to  be  married,  that  will  make  it 
plain  sailing  enough.  It  was  awkward — while — 

She  broke  off  and  sat  down  again  beside  him,  pondering  and 
smiling  as  he  had  seen  her  do  in  Manchester,  when  she  had  the 
prospect  of  a  new  dress  or  some  amusement  that  excited  her. 

'  How  have  you  been  able  to  think  about  such  things  ? '  he 
asked  her,  marvelling. 


378  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

'  Think  about  them  !  What  was  the  good  of  that  ?  It's  the 
churches  I  like,  and  the  priests.  Xow  there  is  something  to  see 
in  the  Paris  churches,  like  the  Madeleine — worth  a  dozen  St. 
Damian's, — you  may  tell  Dora  that.  The  flowers  and  the  dresses 
and  the  music — they  are  something  like.  And  the  priests — ' 

She  smiled  again,  little  meditative  smiles,  as  though  she  were 
recalling  her  experiences. 

'Well,  I  don't  know  that  there's  much  about  them,'  she  said 
at  last ;  '  they're  queer,  and  they're  awfully  clever,  and  they  want 
to  manage  you,  of  course.' 

She  stopped,  quite  unable  to  express  herself  any  more  fully. 
But  it  was  evident  that  the  traditional  relation  of  the  Catholic 
priest  to  his  penitent  had  been  to  her  a  subject  of  curiosity  and 
excitement — that  she  would  gladly  know  more  of  it. 

David  could  hardly  believe  his  ears.  He  sat  lost  at  first  in 
the  pure  surprise  of  it,  in  the  sense  of  Louie's  unlikeness  to  any 
other  human  creature  he  had  ever  seen.  Then  a  gleam  of  satis- 
faction arose.  He  had  heard  of  the  hold  on  women  possessed  by 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  maintained  by  her  marvellous,  and  on 
the  whole  admirable,  system  of  direction.  For  himself',  he  would 
have  no  priests  of  whatever  Church.  But  his  mind  harboured 
none  of  the  common  Protestant  rules  and  shibboleths.  In  God's 
name,  let  the  priests  get  hold  of  this  sister  of  his  ! — if  they  could 
— when  he — 

'  Marry  this  man,  then  ! '  he  said  to  her  at  last,  breaking  the 
silence  abruptly,  '  and  square  it  with  the  Church,  if  you  want 
to.' 

'  Oh,  indeed  ! '  she  said  mockingly.  '  So  you  have  nothing  to 
say  against  my  turning  Catholic?  I  should  like  to  see  Uncle 
Reuben's  face. ' 

Her  voice  had  the  exultant  mischief  of  a  child.  It  was  evi- 
dent that  her  spirits  were  rising,  that  her  mood  towards  her 
brother  was  becoming  more  amiable. 

'  Nothing,'  he  said  dryly,  replying  to  her  question. 

Then  he  got  up  and  looked  for  his  hat.  She  watched  him 
askance.  '  What  are  you  going  for  ?  I  could  get  you  some  tea. 
He  won't  be  in  for  hours.' 

'  I  have  said  what  I  had  to  say.  These ' — taking  a  paper  from 
his  pocket  and  laying  it  down,  '  are  all  the  directions,  legal  and 
other,  that  concern  you,  as  to  the  marriage.  I  drew  them  up 
this  morning,  with  Mr.  O'Kolly.  I  have  given  you  his  address. 
You  can  communicate  with  him  at  any  time.' 

'  I  can  write  to  you,  I  suppose  ? ' 

'  Better  write  to  him,'  he  said  quietlv,  'he  has  instructions. 
He  seemed  to  me  a  good  sort.' 

4  Whei'e  are  you  going  ? ' 

'  Back  to  Paris,  and  then — home.' 

She  placed  herself  in  his  way.  so  that  the  sunny  light  of  the 
late  afternoon,  coming  mostly  from  behind  her,  left  her  face  in 
shadow. 


CHAP,  xi  STORM  AND   STRESS  379 

1  What'll  you  do  without  that  money  ? '  she  asked  abruptly. 

He  paused,  getting  together  his  answer  with  difficulty. 

'I  have  the  stock,  and  there  is  something  left  of  the  sixty 
pounds  Uncle  Reuben  brought.  I  shall  do.' 

'  He'll  muddle  it  all,'  she  said  roughly.     '  What's  the  good  ?' 

And  she  folded  her  arms  across  her  with  the  recklessness  of 
one  quite  ready  and  eager,  if  need  be,  to  fight  her  own  battle, 
with  her  own  weapons,  in  her  own  way. 

'Get  Mr.  O'Kelly  to  keep  it,  if  you  can  persuade  him,  and 
draw  it  by  degrees.  I'd  have  made  a  trust  of  it,  if  it  had  been 
enough  ;  but  it  isn't.  Twenty-four  pounds  a  year  :  that's  all 
you'd  get,  if  we  tied  up  the  capital.' 

She  laughed.  Evidently  her  acquaintance  with  Montjoie  had 
enlarged  her  notions  of  money,  which  were  precise  and  acute 
enough  before. 

'  He  spends  that  in  a  supper  when  he's  in  cash.  I'll  be 
curious  to  see  whether,  all  in  a  lump,  it'll  be  enough  to  make  him 
marry  me.  Still,  he  is  precious  hard  up :  he  don't  stir  out  till 
dark,  he's  so  afraid  of  meeting  people.' 

'  That's  my  hope,'  said  David  heavily,  hardly  knowing  what  he 
said.  'Good-bye.' 

'  Hope  ! '  she  re-echoed  bitterly.  '  What  d'you  want  to  tie  me 
to  him  for,  for  good  and  all  ? ' 

And,  turning  away  from  him,  she  stared,  frowning,  through 
the  dingy  glass  door  into  the  darkening  garden.  In  her  mind 
there  was  once  more  that  strange  uprising  swell  of  reaction — of 
hatred  of  herself  and  life. 

Why,  indeed  ?  David  could  not  have  answered  her  question. 
He  only  knew  that  there  was  a  blind  instinct  in  him  driving  him 
to  this,  as  the  best  that  remained  open — the  only  amende  possible 
for  what  had  been  so  vilely  done  by  himself,  by  her,  and  by  the 
man  who  had  worked  out  her  fall  for  a  mere  vicious  whim. 
There  was  no  word  in  any  mouth,  it  seemed  to  him,  of  his  being 
in  love  with  her. 

There  were  all  sorts  of  whirling  thoughts  in  his  mind — frag- 
ments cast  up  by  the  waves  of  desolate  experience  he  had  been 
passing  through — inarticulate  cries  of  warning,  judgment,  pain. 
But  he  could  put  nothing  into  words. 

'  Good-bye,  Louie  ! ' 

She  turned  and  stood  looking  at  him. 

'  What  made  you  get  ill  ? '  she  inquired,  eyeing  him. 

His  thirsty  heart  drank  in  the  change  of  tone. 

'  I  don't  sleep, '  he  said  hurriedly.  '  It's  the  noise.  The  Nord 
station  is  never  quiet.  Well,  mind  you've  got  to  bring  that  off. 
Keep  the  papers  safe.  Good-bye,  for  a  long  tiuic.' 

'  I  can  come  over  when  I  want  ?'  she  said  half  sullenly. 

'  Yes,'  he  assented,  '  but  you  won't  want.' 

He  drew  her  by  the  hand,  with  a  solemn  tremulous  feeling, 
and  kissed  her  on  the  chsek.  He  would  Lave  liLvd  to  give  her 
their  father's  dying  letter.  It  was  there,  in  hir-  ^wjit-pocket.  Bat 


380  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  nj 

he  shrank  from  the  emotion  of  it.  No,  he  must  go.  He  had 
done  all  he  could. 

She  opened  the  door  for  him,  and  took  him  to  the  garden-gate 
in  silence. 

'When  I'm  married,'  she  said  shortly,  'if  ever  I  am — Lord 
knows ! — you  can  tell  Uncle  Keuben  and  Dora  ? ' 

'Yes.     Good-bye.' 

The  gate  closed  behind  him.  He  went  away,  hurrying  towards 
the  Auteuil  station. 

When  he  landed  again  in  the  Paris  streets,  he  stood  irresolute. 

'  One  more  look,'  he  said  to  himself,  '  one  more.' 

And  he  turned  down  the  Kue  Chantal.  There  was  the  familiar 
archway,  and  the  light  shining  behind  the  porter's  door.  Was 
her  room  already  stripped  and  bare,  or  was  the  broken  glass — 
poor  dumb  prophet ! — still  there,  against  the  wall  ? 

He  wandered  on  through  the  lamp-lit  city  and  the  crowded 
pavements.  Elise — the  wraith  of  her — went  with  him,  hand  in 
hand,  ghost  with  ghost,  amid  this  multitude  of  men.  Sometimes, 
breaking  from  this  dreani-companionship,  he  would  wake  with 
terror  to  the  perception  of  his  true,  his  utter  loneliness.  He  was 
not  made  to  be  alone,  and  the  thought  that  nowhere  in  this  great 
Paris  was  there  a  single  human  being  to  whose  friendly  eye  or 
hand  he  might  turn  him  in  his  need,  swept  across  him  from  time 
to  time,  contracting  the  heart.  Dora — Mr.  Ancrum — if  they 
knew,  they  would  be  sorry. 

Then  again  indifference  and  blankness  came  upon  him,  and  he 
could  only  move  feebly  on,  seeing  everything  in  a  blur  and  mist. 
After  these  long  days  and  nights  of  sleeplessness,  semi-starvation, 
and  terrible  excitement,  every  nerve  was  sick,  every  organ  out  of 
gear. 

The  lights  of  the  Tuileries,  the  stately  pile  of  the  Louvre,  under 
a  grey  driving  sky. — There  would  be  rain  soon — ah,  there  it 
came  !  the  great  drops  hissing  along  the  pavement.  He  pushed 
on  to  the  river,  careless  of  the  storm,  soothed,  indeed,  by  the  cool 
dashes  of  rain  in  his  face  and  eyes. 

The  Place  de  la  Concorde  seemed  to  him  as  day,  so  brilliant 
was  the  glare  of  its  lamps.  To  the  right,  the  fairyland  of  the 
Champs-Elysees,  the  trees  tossing  under  the  sudden  blast ;  in 
front,  the  black  trench  of  the  river.  On,  on — let  him  see  it  all — 
gather  it  all  into  his  accusing  heart  and  brain,  and  then  at  a 
stroke  blot  out  the  inward  and  the  outward  vision,  and  '  cease 
upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain' ! 

He  walked  till  he  could  walk  no  more ;  then  he  sank  on  a  dark 
seat  on  the  Quai  Saint-Michel,  cursing  himself.  Had  he  no  nerve 
left  for  the  last  act — was  that  what  this  delay,  this  fooling  meant  ? 
Coward  I 

But  not  here  !  not  in  these  streets — this  publicity  !  Back — to 
the  little  noisome  room.  There  lock  the  door,  and  make  an  end  ! 

On  the  way  northward,  at  the  command  of  a  sudden  caprice, 
he  sat  down  outside  a  blazing  cafe  on  the  Boulevard  and  ordered 


CHAP,  xi  STORM  AND  STRESS  381 

absinthe,  which  he  had  never  tasted.  While  he  waited  he  looked 
round  on  the  painted  women,  on  the  men  escorting  them,  on 
the  loungers  with  their  newspapers  and  cigars,  the  shouting, 
supercilious  waiters.  But  all  the  little  odious  details  of  the  scene 
escaped  him ;  he  felt  only  the  touchingness  of  his  human  com- 
radeship, the  yearning  of  a  common  life,  bruised  and  wounded 
but  still  alive  within  him. 

Then  he  drank  the  stuff  they  gave  him,  loathed  it,  paid  and 
staggered  on.  When  he  reached  his  hotel  he  crept  upstairs, 
dreading  to  meet  any  of  the  harsh-faced  people  who  frowned  as 
he  passed  them.  He  had  done  abject  things  these  last  three  days 
to  conciliate  them — tipped  the  waiter,  ordered  food,  not  that  he 
might  eat  it  but  that  he  might  pay  for  it,  bowed  to  the  landlady 
— all  to  save  the  shrinking  of  his  sore  and  quivering  nerves.  In 
vain  1  It  seemed  to  him  that  since  that  last  look  from  Elise  as 
she  nestled  into  the  fern,  there  had  been  no  kindness  for  him  in 
human  eyes — save,  perhaps,  from  that  woman  with  the  child. 

As  he  dragged  himself  up  to  his  fourth  floor,  the  stimulant  he 
had  taken  began  to  work  upon  his  starved  senses.  The  key  was 
in  his  door,  he  turned  it  and  fell  into  his  room,  while  the  door, 
with  the  key  still  in  it,  swung  to  behind  him.  Guiding  himself 
by  the  furniture,  he  reached  the  only  chair  the  room  possessed — 
an  arm-chair  of  the  commonest  and  cheapest  hotel  sort,  which, 
because  of  the  uncertainty  of  its  legs,  thefemme  de  chambre  had 
propped  up  against  the  bed.  He  sat  down  in  it  and  his  head  fell 
back  on  the  counterpane.  There  was  much  to  do.  He  had  to  write 
to  John  about  the  sale  of  his  stock  and  the  payment  of  his  debts. 
He  had  to  put  his  father's  letter  into  an  envelope  for  Louie,  to 
send  all  the  papers  and  letters  he  had  on  him  and  a  last  message 
to  Mr.  Ancrum,  and  then  to  post  these  letters,  so  that  nothing 
private  might  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  French  police,  who  would, 
of  course,  open  his  bag. 

While  these  thoughts  were  rising  in  him,  a  cloud  came  over 
the  brain,  bringing  with  it,  as  it  seemed,  the  first  moment  of  ease 
which  had  been  his  during  this  awful  fortnight.  Before  he  yielded 
himself  to  it  he  thrust  his  hand  into  his  coat-pocket  with  a  sudden 
vague  anxiety  to  feel  what  was  there.  But  even  as  he  withdrew 
his  fingers  they  relaxed  ;  a  black  object  came  with  them,  and  fell 
unheeded,  first  on  his  knee,  then  on  to  a  coat  lying  on  the  floor 
between  him  and  the  window. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  afterwards  there  was  a  stir  and  voices 
on  the  landing  outside.  Some  one  knocked  at  the  door  of  No. 
139.  No  answer.  '  The  key  is  in  the  door.  Ouvrez done!'1  cried 
the  waiter,  as  he  ran  downstairs  again  to  the  restaurant,  which 
was  still  crowded.  The  visitor  opened  the  door  and  peeped  in. 
Some  quick  words  broke  from  him.  He  rushed  in  and  up  to  the 
bed.  But  directly  the  heavy  feverish  breathing  of  the  figure  in 
the  chair  caught  his  ear  his  look  of  sudden  horror  relaxed,  and 
he  fell  back,  looking  at  the  sleeping  youth. 

It  was  a  piteous  sight  he  saw  !     Exhaustion,  helplessness, 


882  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

sorrow,  physical  injury,  and  moral  defeat,  were  written  in  every 
line  of  the  poor  drawn  face  and  shrunken  form.  The  brow  was 
furrowed,  the  breathing  hard,  the  mouth  dry  and  bloodless. 
Upon  the  mind  of  the  new-comer,  possessed  as  it  was  with  the 
image  of  what  David  Grieve  had  been  two  short  months  before, 
the  effect  of  the  spectacle  was  presently  overwhelming. 

He  fell  on  his  knees  beside  the  sleeper.  But  as  he  did  so,  he 
noticed  the  black  thing  on  the  floor,  stooped  to  it,  and  took  it  up. 
That  it  should  be  a  loaded  revolver  seemed  to  him  at  that  moment 
the  most  natural  thing  in  the  world,  little  used  as  he  personally 
was  to  such  possessions.  He  looked  at  it  carefully,  took  out  the 
two  cartridges  it  contained,  put  them  into  one  pocket  and  the 
revolver  into  the  other. 

Then  he  laid  his  arm  round  the  lad's  neck. 

'  David  ! ' 

The  young  man  woke  directly  and  sat  up,  shaking  with  terror 
and  excitement.  He  pushed  his  visitor  from  him,  looking  at  him 
with  defiance.  Then  he  slipped  his  hand  inside  his  coat  and 
sprang  up  with  a  cry. 

'  David  ! — dear  boy — dear  fellow  ! ' 

The  voice  penetrated  the  lad's  ear.  He  caught  his  visitor  and 
dragged  him  forward  to  the  light.  It  fell  on  the  twisted  face  and 
wet  eyes  of  Mr.  Ancrum.  So  startling  was  the  vision,  so  poignant 
were  the  associations  which  it  set  vibrating,  that  David  stood 
staring  and  trembling,  struck  dumb. 

'  Oh,  my  poor  lad  !  my  poor  lad  !  John  wanfed  me  to  come 
yesterday,  and  I  delayed.  I  was  a  selfish  wretch.  Now  I  will 
take  you  home.' 

David  fell  again  upon  his  chair,  too  feeble  to  ^peak,  too  feeble 
even  to  weep,  the  little  remaining  colour  ebbing  from  his  cheeks. 
The  minister  used  all  his  strength,  and  laid  him  on  the  bed.  Then 
he  rang  and  made  even  the  callous  and  haughty  madame,  who 
was  presently  summoned,  listen  to  and  obey  him  while  he  sent 
for  brandy  and  a  doctor,  and  let  the  air  of  the  night  into  the 
stifling  room. 

CHAPTER  XII 

IN  two  or  three  days  the  English  doctor  who  was  attending 
David  strongly  advised  Mr.  Ancrum  to  get  his  charge  home. 
The  fierce  strain  his  youth  had  sustained  acting  through  the 
nervous  system  had  disordered  almost  every  bodily  function,  and 
the  collapse  which  followed  Mr.  Ancrum's  appearance  was  severe. 
He  would  lie  in  his  bed  motionless  and  speechless,  volunteered  no 
confidence,  and  showed  hai'dly  any  rallying  power. 

'Get  him  out  of  this  furnace  and  that  doghole  of  a  room,' 
said  the  doctor.  '  He  has  come  to  grief  here  somehow — that's 
plain.  You  won't  make  anything  of  him  till  you  move  him.' 

"When  the  lad  was  at  last  stretched  on  the  deck  of  a  Channel 
steamer  speeding  to  the  English  coast,  and  the  sea  breeze  had 


CHAP    xil  STORM   AND  STRESS  383 

brought  a  faint  touch  of  returning  colour  to  his  cheek,  he  asked 
the  question  he  had  never  yet  had  the  physical  energy  to  ask. 

'  Why  did  you  come,  and  how  did  you  find  me  ? ' 

Then  it  appeared  that  the  old  cashier  at  Hey  wood's  bank,  who 
had  taken  a  friendly  interest  in  the  young  bookseller  since  the 
opening  of  his  account,  had  dropped  a  private  word  to  John  in 
the  course  of  conversation,  which  had  alarmed  that  youth  not  a 
little.  His  own  last  scrawl  from  David  had  puzzled  and  dis- 
quieted him,  and  he  straightway  marched  off  to  Mr.  Ancrum  to 
consult.  Whereupon  the  minister  wrote  cautiously  and  affection- 
ately to  David  asking  for  some  prompt  and  full  explanation  of 
things  for  his  friends'  sake.  The  letter  was,  as  we  know,  never 
opened,  and  therefore  never  answered.  Whereupon  John's  jea- 
lous misery  on  Louie's  account  and  Mr.  Ancrum's  love  for  David 
had  so  worked  that  the  minister  had  broken  in  upon  his  scanty 
savings  and  started  for  Paris  at  a  few  hours'  notice.  Once  in  the 
Rue  Chantal  he  had  come  easily  on  David's  track. 

Naturally  he  had  inquired  after  Louie  as  soon  as  David  was  in 
a  condition  to  be  questioned  at  all.  The  young  man  hesitated  a 
moment,  then  he  said  resolutely,  '  She  is  married,'  and  would  say 
no  more.  Mr.  Ancrum  pressed  the  matter  a  little,  but  his  patient 
merely  shook  his  head,  and  the  sight  of  him  as  he  lay  there  on 
the  pillow  was  soon  enough  to  silence  the  minister. 

On  the  evening  before  they  left  Paris  he  called  for  a  telegraph 
form,  wrote  a  message  and  paid  the  reply,  but  Mr.  Ancrum  saw 
nothing  of  either.  When  the  reply  arrived  David  crushed  it  in 
his  hand  with  a  strange  look,  half  bitterness,  half  relief,  and 
flung  it  behind  a  piece  of  furniture  standing  near. 

Now,  on  the-. cool,  wind-swept  deck,  he  seemed  more  inclined 
to  talk  than  he  'Tiad  been  yet.  He  asked  questions  about  John 
and  the  Lomaxes — he  even  inquired  after  Lucy,  as  to  whom  the 
minister  who  had  lately  improved  an  acquaintance  with  Dora  and 
her  father,  begun  through  David,  could  only  answer  vaguely  that 
he  believed  she  was  still  in  the  south.  But  he  volunteered  no- 
thing about  his  own  affairs  or  the  cause  of  the  state  in  which 
Mr.  Ancrum  had  found  him. 

Every  now  and  then,  indeed,  as  they  stood  together  at  the 
side  of  the  vessel,  David  leaning  heavily  against  it,  his  words 
would  fail  him  altogether,  and  he  would  be  left  staring  stupidly, 
the  great  black  eyes  widening,  the  lower  lip  falling — over  the 
shifting  brilliance  of  the  sea. 

Ancrum  was  almost  sure  too  that  in  the  darkness  of  their 
last  night  in  Paris  there  had  been,  hour  after  hour,  a  sound  of 
hard  and  stifled  weeping,  mingled  with  the  noises  from  the 
street  and  from  the  station  ;  and  to-day  the  youth  in  the  face 
•was  more  quenched  than  ever,  in  spite  of  the  signs  of  reviving 
health.  There  had  be-on  a  woman  in  the  case,  of  course  :  Louie 
might  have  misbehaved  herself  ;  but  after  all  the  world  is  so 
made  that  no  sister  can  make  a  brother  suffer  as  David  had 
evidently  suffered — and  then  there  was  the  revolver  !  About  this 


884  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

last,  after  one  or  two  restless  movements  of  search,  which  Mr. 
Ancrum  interpreted,  David  had  never  asked,  and  the  minister, 
timid  man  of  peace  that  he  was,  had  resold  it  before  leaving. 

Well,  it  was  a  problem,  and  it  must  be  left  to  time.  Mean- 
while Mr.  Ancrum  was  certainly  astonished  that  any  love  affair 
should  have  had  such  a  destructive  volcanic  power  with  the  lad. 
For  it  was  no  mere  raw  and  sensuous  nature,  no  idle  and  morbid 
brain.  One  would  have  thought  that  so  many  different  aptitudes 
and  capacities  would  have  kept  each  other  in  check. 

As  they  neared  Manchester,  David  grew  plainly  restless  and 
ill  at  ease.  He  looked  out  sharply  for  the  name  of  each  succeed- 
ing town,  half  turning  afterwards,  as  though  to  speak  to  his 
companion  ;  but  it  was  not  till  they  were  within  ten  minutes  of 
the  Central  Station  that  he  said — 

'  John  will  want  to  know  about  Louie.  She  is  married, — as  I 
told  you, — to  a  French  sculptor.  I  have  handed  over  to  her  all 
my  father's  money — that  is  why  I  drew  it  out.' 

Mr.  Ancrum  edged  up  closer  to  him — all  ears — waiting  for 
more.  But  there  was  nothing  more. 

'  And  you  are  satisfied  ? '  he  said  at  last. 

David  nodded  and  looked  out  of  window  intently. 

'  What  is  the  man's  name  ?' 

David  either  did  not  or  would  not  hear,  and  Mr.  Ancrum  let 
him  alone.  But  the  news  was  startling.  So  the  boy  had  stripped 
himself,  and  must  begin  the  world  again  as  before  I  What  had 
that  minx  been  after  ? 

Manchester  again.  David  looked  out  eagerly  from  the  cab, 
his  hand  trembling  on  his  knee,  beads  of  perspiration  on  his  face. 

They  turned  up  the  narrow  street,  and  there  in  the  distance 
to  the  right  was  the  stall  and  the  shop,  and  a  figure  on  the  steps. 
Mr.  Ancrum  had  sent  a  card  before  them,  and  John  was  on  the 
watch. 

The  instant  the  cab  stopped,  and  before  the  driver  could 
dismount,  John  had  opened  the  door.  Putting  his  head  in  he 
peered  at  the  pair  inside,  and  at  the  opposite  seat,  with  his  small 
short-sighted  eyes. 

'  Where  is  she?'  he  said  hoarsely,  barring  the  way. 

Mr.  Ancrum  looked  at  his  companion.  David  had  shrunk 
back  into  the  corner,  with  a  white  hangdog  look,  and  said  no- 
thing. The  minister  interposed. 

' David  will  tell  you  all,' he  said  gently.  'First  help  me  in 
with  him,  and  the  bags.  He  is  a  sick  man.' 

With   a   huge   effort  John  controlled  himself,  and  they  got 
inside.     Then  he  shut  the  shop  door  and  put  his  back  against  it. 
'  Tell  me  where  she  is,'  he  repeated  shortly. 
'  She  is  married,'  David  said  in  a  low  voice,  but  looking  up 
from  the  chair  on  which  he  had  sunk.     '  By  now — she  is  mar- 
ried.    I  heard  by  telegram  last  night  that  all  was  arranged  for 
to-day. ' 

The  lad  opposite  made  a  sharp,   inarticulate  sound  which 


CHAP,  xii  STORM  AND  STRESS  885 

startled  the  minister's  ear.  Then  clutching  the  handle  of  the 
door,  he  resumed  sharply — 

'Who  has  she  married?' 

The  assumption  of  the  right  to  question  was  arrogance  itself 
— strange  in  the  dumb,  retiring  creature  whom  the  minister  had 
hitherto  known  only  as  David's  slave  and  shadow  ! 

'A  French  sculptor,'  said  David  steadily,  but  propping  his 
head  and  hand  against  the  counter,  so  as  to  avoid  John's  stare — 
'  a  man  called  Montjoie.  I  was  a  brute — I  neglected  her.  She 
got  into  his  hands.  Then  I  sent  for  all  my  money  to  bribe  him 
to  marry  her.  And  he  has.' 

'  You — you  blackguard  ! '  cried  John. 

David  straightened  instinctively  under  the  blow,  and  his  eyes 
met  John's  for  one  fierce  moment.  Then  Mr.  Ancrum  thought  he 
would  have  fainted.  The  minister  took  rough  hold  of  John  by 
the  shoulders. 

'  If  you  can't  stay  and  hold  your  tongue,'  he  said,  '  you  must 
go.  He  is  worn  out  with  the  journey,  and  I  shall  get  him  to 
bed.  Here's  some  money  :  suppose  you  run  to  the  house  round 
the  corner,  in  Prince's  Street ;  ask  if  they've  got  some  strong 
soup,  and,  if  they  have,  hurry  back  with  it.  Come — look  sharp. 
And — one  moment — you've  been  sleeping  here,  I  suppose  ? 
Well,  I  shall  take  your  room  for  a  bit,  if  that'll  suit  you.  This 
fellow'll  have  to  be  looked  after.' 

The  little  lame  creature  spoke  like  one  who  meant  to  have  his 
way.  John  took  the  coin,  hesitated,  and  stumbled  out. 

For  days  afterwards  there  was  silence  between  him  and  David, 
except  for  business  directions.  He  avoided  being  in  the  shop 
with  his  employer,  and  would  stand  for  hours  on  the  step, 
ostensibly  watching  the  stall,  but  in  reality  doing  no  business 
that  he  could  help.  Whenever  Mr.  Ancrum  caught  sight  of  him 
he  was  leaning  against  the  wall,  his  hat  slouched  over  his  eyes, 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  utterly  inert  and  listless,  more  like  a 
log  than  a  human  being.  Still  he  was  no  less  stout,  lumpish, 
and  pink-faced  than  before.  His  fate  might  have  all  the  tragic 
quality  ;  nature  had  none  the  less  inexorably  endowed  him  with 
the  externals  of  farce. 

Meanwhile  David  dragged  himself  from  his  bed  to  the  shop 
and  set  to  work  to  pick  up  dropped  threads.  The  customers,  who 
had  been  formerly  interested  in  him,  discovered  his  return,  and 
came  in  to  inquire  why  he  had  been  so  long  away,  or,  in  the  case 
of  one  or  two,  whether  he  had  executed  certain  commissions  in 
Paris.  The  explanation  of  illness,  however,  circulated  from  the 
first  moment  by  Mr.  Ancrum,  and  perforce  adopted — though 
with  an  inward  rage  and  rebellion — by  David  himself,  was  amply 
sufficient  to  cover  his  omissions  and  inattentions,  and  to  ease  his 
resumption  of  his  old  place.  His  appearance  indeed  was  still 
ghastly.  The  skin  of  the  face  had  the  tightened,  transparent 
look  of  weakness  ;  the  eyes,  reddened  and  sunk,  showed  but 
little  of  their  old  splendour  between  the  blue  circles  beneath  and 


886  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

the  heavy  brows  above ;  even  the  hair  seemed  to  have  lost  its 
boyish  curl,  and  fell  in  harsh,  troublesome  waves  over  the  fore- 
head, whence  its  owner  was  perpetually  and  impatiently  thrusting 
it  back.  All  the  bony  structure  of  the  face  had  been  emphasised 
at  the  expense  of  its  young  grace  and  bloom,  and  the  new  indi- 
cations of  moustache  and  beard  did  but  add  to  its  striking  and 
painful  black  and  white.  And  the  whole  impression  of  change 
was  completed  by  the  melancholy  aloofness,  the  shrinking  distrust 
with  which  eyes  once  overflowing  with  the  frankness  and  eager- 
ness of  one  of  the  most  accessible  of  human  souls  now  looked  out 
upon  the  world. 

'Was  it  fever?'  said  a  young  Owens  College  professor  who 
had  taken  a  lively  interest  from  the  beginning  in  the  clever  lad's 
venture.  '  Upon  my  word !  you  do  look  pulled  down.  Paris 
may  be  the  first  city  in  the  world — it  is  an  insanitary  hole  all  the 
same.  So  you  never  found  time  to  inquire  after  those  Moliere 
editions  for  me  ? ' 

David  racked  his  brains.  What  was  it  he  had  been  asked  to 
do  ?  He  remembered  half  an  hour's  talk  on  one  of  those  early 
days  with  a  bookseller  on  the  Quai  Voltaire — was  it  about  this 
commission  ?  He  could  not  recall. 

'  No,  sir,'  he  said,  stammering  and  flushing.  '  I  believe  I  did 
ask  somewhere,  but  I  can't  remember.' 

'It's  very  natural,  very  natural,'  said  the  professor  kindly. 
'  Never  mind.  I'll  send  you  the  particulars  again,  and  you  can 
keep  your  eyes  open  for  me.  And,  look  here,  take  your  business 
easy  for  a  while.  You'll  get  on — you're  sure  to  get  on — if  you 
only  recover  your  health.' 

David  opened  the  door  for  him  in  silence. 

The  reawakening  of  his  old  life  in  him  was  strange  and  slow. 
"When  he  first  found  himself  back  among  his  books  and  catalogues, 
his  ledgers  and  business  memoranda,  he  was  bewildered  and  im- 
patient. What  did  these  elaborate  notes,  with  their  cabalistic 
signs  and  abbreviations — whether  as  to  the  needs  of  customers, 
or  the  whereabouts  of  books,  or  the  history  of  prices — mean  or 
matter  ?  He  was  like  a  man  who  has  lost  a  sense.  Then  the 
pressure  of  certain  debts  which  should  have  been  met  out  of  the 
money  in  the  bank  first  put  some  life  into  him.  He  looked  into 
his  financial  situation  and  found  it  grave,  though  not  desperate. 
All  hope  of  a  large  and  easy  expansion  of  business  was,  of  course, 
gone.  The  loss  of  his  capital  had  reduced  him  to  the  daily  shifts 
and  small  laborious  accumulations  with  which  he  had  begun. 
But  this  factor  in  his  state  was  morally  of  more  profit  to  him  at 
the  moment  than  any  other.  With  such  homely  medicines  nature 
and  life  can  often  do  most  for  us. 

Such  was  Ancrum's  belief,  and  in  consequence  he  showed  a 
very  remarkable  wisdom  during  these  early  days  of  David's 
return. 

'  As  far  as  I  can  judge,  there  has  been  a  bad  shake  to  the 
heart  in  more  senses  than  one,'  had  been  the  dry  remark  of  the 


CHAP,  xii  STORM  AND  STRESS  887 

Paris  doctor  ;  '  and  as  for  nervous  system,  it's  a  mercy  he's  got 
any  left.  Take  care  of  him,  but  for  Heaven's  sake  don't  make 
an  invalid  of  him — that  would  be  the  finish.' 

So  that  Ancrum  offered  no  fussy  opposition  to  the  resumption 
of  the  young  man's  daily  work,  though  at  first  it  produced  a  co?i- 
stant  battle  with  exhaustion  and  depression.  But  never  day  or 
night  did  the  minister  forget  his  charge.  He  saw  that  he  ate  and 
drank  ;  he  enforced  a  few  common-sense  remedies  for  the  nervous 
ills  which  the  moral  convulsion  had  left  behind  it,  ills  which  the 
lad  in  his  irritable  humiliation  would  fain  have  hidden  even  from 
him  ;  above  all  he  knew  how  to  say  a  word  which  kept  Dora  and 
Daddy  and  other  friends  away  for  a  time,  and  how  to  stand  be- 
tween David  and  that  choked  and  miserable  John. 

He  had  the  strength  of  mind  also  to  press  for  no  confidence  and 
to  expect  no  thanks.  He  bad  little  fear  of  any  further  attempts 
at  suicide,  though  he  would  have  found  it  difficult  perhaps 
to  explain  why.  But  instinctively  he  felt  that  for  all  practical 
purposes  David  had  been  mad  when  he  found  him,  and  that  he 
was  mad  no  longer.  He  was  wretched,  and  only  a  fraction  of 
his  mind  was  in  Manchester  and  in  his  business — that  was  plain. 
But,  in  however  imperfect  a  way,  he  was  again  master  of  himself  ; 
and  the  minister  bided  his  time,  putting  his  ultimate  trust  in  one 
of  the  finest  mental  and  physical  constitutions  he  had  ever  known. 

In  about  ten  days  David  took  up  his  hat  one  afternoon  and, 
for  the  first  time,  ventured  into  the  streets.  On  his  return  he 
was  walking  down  Potter  Street  in  a  storm  of  wind  and  rain, 
when  he  ran  against  some  one  who  was  holding  an  umbrella  right 
in  front  of  her  and  battling  with'  the  weather.  In  his  recoil  he 
saw  that  it  was  Dora. 

Dora  too  looked  up,  a  sudden  radiant  pleasure  in  her  face 
overflowing  her  soft  eyes  and  lips. 

'Oh,  Mr.  Grieve  !    And  are  you  really  better?' 

'  Yes,'  he  said  briefly.     '  May  I  walk  with  you  a  bit  ?' 

'  Oh  no  ! — I  don't  believe  you  ought  to  be  out  in  such  weather. 
I'll  just  come  the  length  of  the  street  with  you.' 

And  she  turned  and  walked  with  him,  chattering  fast,  and  of 
course,  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  omniscience  which  could 
not  have  been  hers,  foolishly.  Had  he  liked  Paris  ? — what  he 
saw  of  it  at  least  before  he  had  been  ill  ? — and  how  long  had  he 
been  ill  ?  Why  had  he  not  let  Mr.  Ancrum  or  some  one  know 
sooner  ?  And  would  he  tell  her  more  about  Louie  ?  She  heard 
that  she  was  married,  but  there  was  so  much  she,  Dora,  wanted 
to  hear. 

To  his  first  scanty  answers  she  paid  in  truth  but  small  heed, 
for  the  joy  of  seeing  him  again  was  soon  effaced  by  the  painful 
impression  of  his  altered  aspect.  The  more  she  looked  at  him, 
the  more  her  heart  went  out  to  him  ;  her  whole  being  became  an 
effusion  of  pity  and  tenderness,  and  her  simplest  words,  maidenly 
and  self-restrained  as  she  was,  were  in  fact  charged  with  some- 
thing electric,  ineffable.  His  suffering,  his  neighbourhood,  her 


388  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

own  sympathy — she  was  taken  up,  overwhelmed  by  these  general 
impressions.  Inferences,  details  escaped  her. 

But  as  she  touched  on  the  matter  of  Louie,  and  they  were  now 
at  his  own  steps,  he  said  to  her  hurriedly — 

'  Walk  a  little  further,  and  I'll  tell  you.     John's  in  there.' 

She  opened  her  eyes,  not  understanding,  and  then  demurred 
a  little  on  the  ground  of  his  health  and  the  rain. 

'  Oh,  I'm  all  right,'  he  said  impatiently.  '  Look  here,  will 
you  walk  to  Chetham's  Library  ?  There'll  be  a  quiet  place  there, 
in  the  reading  room — sure  to  be — where  we  can  talk. ' 

She  assented,  and  very  soon  they  were  mounting  the  black 
oak  stairs  leading  to  this  old  corner  of  Manchester.  At  the  top 
of  the  stairs  they  saw  in  the  distance,  at  the  end  of  the  passage 
on  to  which  open  the  readers'  studies,  each  with  its  lining  of 
folios  and  its  oaken  lattice,  a  librarian,  who  nodded  to  David, 
and  took  a  look  at  Dora.  Further  on  they  stumbled  over  a  small 
boy  from  the  charity  school  who  wished  to  lionise  them  over  the 
whole  building.  But  when  he  had  been  routed,  they  found  the 
beautiful  panelled  and  painted  reading-room  quite  empty,  and 
took  possession  of  it  in  peace.  David  led  the  way  to  an  oriel 
window  he  had  become  familiar  with  in  the  off- times  of  his  first 
years  at  Manchester,  and  they  seated  themselves  there  with  a  low 
sloping  desk  between  them,  looking  out  on  the  wide  rain-swept 
yard  outside,  the  buildings  of  the  grammar-school,  and  the  black 
mass  of  the  cathedral. 

Manchester  had  never  been  more  truly  Manchester  than  on 
this  dark  July  afternoon,  with  its  low  shapeless  clouds,  its 
darkness,  wind,  and  pelting  rain.  David,  staring  out  through 
the  lozenge  panes  at  the  familiar  gloom  beyond,  was  suddenly 
carried  by  repulsion  into  the  midst  of  a  vision  which  was  an 
agony — of  a  spring  forest  cut  by  threadlike  paths  ;  of  a  shade- 
less  sun  ;  of  a  white  city  steeped  in  charm,  in  gaiety. 

Dora  watched  him  timidly,  new  perceptions  and  alarms 
dawning  in  her. 

'  You  were  going  to  tell  me  about  Louie,'  she  said. 

He  returned  to  himself,  and  abruptly  turned  with  his  back  to 
the  window,  so  that  he  saw  the  outer  world  no  more. 

'  You  heard  that  she  was  married  ? ' 

'Yes.' 

'  She  has  married  a  brute.  It  was  partly  my  fault.  I 
wanted  to  be  rid  of  her  ;  she  got  in  my  way.  This  man  was  in 
the  same  house ;  I  left  her  to  herself,  and  partly,  I  believe,  to 
spite  me,  she  went  off  with  him.  Then  at  the  last  when  she 
wouldn't  leave  him  I  made  her  marry  him.  I  bribed  him  to 
marry  her.  And  he  did.  I  had  just  enough  money  to  make  it 
worth  his  while.  But  he  will  ill-treat  her ;  and  she  won't  stay 
with  him.  She  will  go  from  bad  to  worse.' 

Dora  drew  back,  with  her  hand  on  the  desk,  staring  at  him 
with  incredulous  horror. 

4  But  you  were  ill  ? '  she  stammered. 


CHAP,  xii  STORM  AND  STRESS  889 

He  shook  his  head. 

4  Never  mind  my  being  ill.  I  wanted  you  to  know,  because 
you  were  good  to  her,  and  I'm  not  going  to  be  a  hypocrite  to 
you.  Nobody  else  need  know  anything  but  that  she's  married, 
which  is  true.  If  I'd  looked  after  her  it  mightn't  have  happened 
— perhaps.  But  I  didn't  look  after  her — I  couldn't.' 

His  face,  propped  in  his  hands,  was  hidden  from  her.  She 
was  in  a  whirl  of  excitement  and  tragic  impression — under- 
standing something,  divining  more. 

4  Louie  was  always  so  self-willed,'  she  said  trembling. 

'  Aye.  That  don't  make  it  any  better.  You  remember  all  I 
told  you  about  her  before  ?  You  know  we  didn't  get  on ;  she 
wasn't  nice  to  me,  and  I  didn't  suit  her,  I  suppose.  But  all  this 
year,  I  don't  know  why,  she's  been  on  my  mind  from  morning 
till  night ;  I've  always  felt  sure,  somehow,  that  she  would  come 
to  harm  ;  and  the  worrying  oneself  about  her — well  !  it  has 
seemed  to  grow  into  one's  very  bones. ' — He  threw  out  the  last 
words  after  a  pause,  in  which  he  had  seemed  to  search  for  some 
phrase  wherewith  to  fit  the  energy  of  his  feeling.  '  I  took  her 
to  Paris  to  keep  her  out  of  mischief.  I  had  much  rather  have 
gone  alone ;  but  she  would  not  ask  you  to  take  her  in,  and  I 
couldn't  leave  her  with  John.  Well,  then,  she  got  in  my  way — 
I  told  you — and  I  let  her  go  to  the  dogs.  There — it's  done — done  ! ' 

He  turned  on  his  seat,  one  hand  drumming  the  desk,  while 
his  eyes  fixed  themselves  apparently  on  the  portrait  of  Sir 
Humphry  Chetham  over  the  carved  mantelpiece.  His  manner 
was  hard  and  rapid ;  neither  voice  nor  expression  had  any  of 
the  simplicity  or  directness  of  remorse. 

Dora  remained  silent  looking  at  him  ;  her  slender  hands 
were  pressed  tight  against  either  cheek  ;  the  tears  rose  slowly 
till  they  filled  her  grey  eyes. 

'It  is  very  sad,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 

There  was  a  pause. 

'  Yes — it's  sad.  So  are  most  things  in  this  world,  perhaps. 
All  natural  wants  seem  just  to  lead  us  to  misery  sooner  or  later. 
And  who  gave  them  to  us — who  put  us  here — with  no  choice  but 
just  to  go  on  blundering  from  one  muddle  into  another  ? ' 

Their  eyes  met.  It  was  as  though  he  had  remembered  her 
religion,  and  could  not,  in  his  bitterness,  refrain  from  an  indirect 
fling  at  it. 

As  for  her,  what  he  said  was  strange  and  repellent  to  her. 
But  her  forlorn  passion,  so  long  trampled  on,  cried  within  her  ; 
her  pure  heart  was  one  prayer,  one  exquisite  throb  of  pain  and 
pity. 

'  Did  some  one  deceive  you  ? '  she  asked,  so  low  that  the 
words  seemed  just  breathed  into  the  air. 

'No, — I  deceived  myself.' 

Then  as  he  looked  at  her  an  impulse  of  confession  crossed  his 
mind.  Sympathy,  sincerity,  womanly  sweetness,  these  things  he 
had  always  associated  with  Dora  Lornax.  Instinctively  he  had 


390  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  G&IEVE          BOOK  m 

chosen  her  for  a  friend  long  ago  as  soon  as  their  first  foolish 
spars  were  over. 

But  the  impulse  passed  away.  He  thought  of  her  severity, 
her  religion,  her  middle-class  canons  and  judgments,  which 
perhaps  were  all  the  stricter  because  of  Daddy's  laxities.  What 
common  ground  between  her  and  his  passion,  between  her  and 
Elise  ?  No  1  if  he  must  speak — if,  in  the  end,  he  proved  too 
weak  to  forbear  wholly  from  speech — let  it  be  to  ears  more 
practised,  and  more  human  ! 

So  he  choked  back  his  words,  and  Dora  felt  instinctively  that 
he  would  tell  her  no  more.  Her  consciousness  of  this  was  a 
mingled  humiliation  and  relief  ;  it  wounded  her  to  feel  that  she 
had  so  little  command  of  him  ;  yet  she  dreaded  what  he  might 
say.  Paris  was  a  wicked  place — so  the  world  reported.  Her 
imagination,  sensitive,  Christianised,  ascetic,  shrank  from  what 
he  might  have  done.  Perhaps  the  woman  shrank  too.  Instead, 
she  threw  herself  upon  the  thought,  the  bliss,  that  he  was  there 
again  beside  her,  restored,  rescued  from  the  gulf,  if  gulf  there 
had  been. 

He  went  back  to  the  subject  of  Louie,  and  told  her  as  much 
as  a  girl  of  Dora's  kind  could  be  told  of  what  he  himself  knew 
of  Louie's  husband.  In  the  course  of  his  two  days'  search  for 
them,  which  had  included  an  interview  with  Madame  Cervin,  he 
had  become  tolerably  well  acquainted  with  Montjoie's  public 
character  and  career.  Incidentally  parts  of  the  story  of  Louie's 
behaviour  came  in,  and  for  one  who  knew  her  as  Dora  did,  her 
madness  and  wilfulness  emerged,  could  be  guessed  at,  little  as 
the  brother  intended  to  excuse  himself  thereby.  How,  indeed, 
should  he  excuse  himself  ?  Louie's  character  was  a  fixed  quan- 
tity to  be  reckoned  on  by  all  who  had  dealings  with  her.  One 
might  as  well  excuse  oneself  for  letting  a  lunatic  escape  by  the 
pretext  of  his  lunacy.  Dora  perfectly  understood  his  tone.  Yet 
in  her  heart  of  hearts  she  forgave  him — for  she  knew  not  what  ! 
— became  his  champion.  There  was  a  dry  sharpness  of  self- 
judgment,  a  settled  conviction  of  coming  ill  in  all  he  said  which 
wrung  her  heart.  And  how  blanched  he  was  by  that  unknown 
misery!  How  should  she  not  pity,  not  forgive?  It  was  the 
impotence  of  her  own  feeling  to  express  itself  that  swelled  her 
throat.  And  poor  Lucy,  too — ah  !  poor  Lucy. 

Suddenly,  as  he  was  speaking,  he  noticed  his  companion  more 
closely,  the  shabbiness  of  the  little  black  hat  and  jacket,  the  new 
lines  round  the  eyes  and  mouth. 

'  You  have  not  been  well,'  he  said  abruptly.  '  How  has  your 
father  been  going  on  ?' 

She  started  and  tried  to  answer  quietly.  But  her  nerves  had 
been  shaken  by  their  talk,  and  by  that  inward  play  of  emotion 
which  had  gone  on  out  of  his  sight.  Quite  unexpectedly  she  broke 
down,  and  covering  her  eyes  with  one  hand,  began  to  sob  gently. 

'I  can't  do  anything  with  him  now,  poor  father,'  she  said, 
when  she  could  control  herself.  '  lie  won't  listen  to  me  at  alL 


CHAP,  xii  STORM  AND   STRESS  391 

The  debts  are  beginning  to  be  dreadful,  and  the  business  is  going 
down  fast.  I  don't  know  what  we  shall  do.  And  it  all  makes 
him  worse— drives  him  to  drink.' 

David  thought  a,  minute,  lifted  out  of  himself  for  the  first  time. 

'Shall  I  come  to-night  to  see  him  ?' 

'  Oh  do  ! '  she  said  eagerly  ;  '  come  about  nine  o'clock.  I  will 
tell  him — perhaps  that  will  keep  him  in.' 

Then  she  went  into  more  details  than  she  had  yet  done ; 
named  the  creditors  who  were  pressing ;  told  how  her  church- 
work,  though  she  worked  herself  blind  night  and  day,  could  do 
but  little  for  them  ;  how  both  the  restaurant  and  the  reading- 
room  were  emptying,  and  she  could  now  get  no  servants  to  stay, 
but  Sarah,  because  of  her  father's  temper. 

It  seemed  to  him  as  he  listened  that  the  story,  with  its  sickened 
hope  and  on-coming  fate,  was  all  in  some  strange  way  familiar ; 
it  or  something  like  it  was  to  have  been  expected ;  for  him  the 
strange  and  jarring  thing  now  would  have  been  to  find  a  happy 
person.  He  was  in  that  young  morbid  state  when  the  mind  hangs 
its  own  cloud  over  the  universe. 

But  Dora  got  up  to  go,  tying  on  her  veil  with  shaking  hands. 
She  was  so  humbly  grateful  to  him  that  he  was  sorry  for  her — 
that  he  could  spare  a  thought  from  his  own  griefs  for  her. 

As  they  went  down  the  dark  stairs  together,  he  asked  after 
Lucy.  She  was  now  staying  with  some  relations  at  "VVakely,  a 
cotton  town  in  the  valley  of  the  Irwell,  Dora  snid  ;  but  she  would 
probably  go  back  to  Hastings  for  the  winter.  It  was  now  settled 
that  she  and  her  father  could  not  get  on  ;  and  the  stepmother 
that  was  to  be — Purcell,  however,  was  taking  his  time — was 
determined  not  to  be  bothered  with  her. 

David  listened  with  a  certain  discomfort.  '  It  was  what  she 
did  for  me,'  he  thought,  '  that  set  him  against  her  for  good  and 
all.  Old  brute  ! ' 

Aloud  he  said  :  '  I  wrote  to  her,  you  know,  and  sent  her  that 
book.  She  did  write  me  a  queer  letter  back — it  was  all  dashes 
and  splashes — about  the  street-preachings  on  the  beach,  and  a 
blind  man  who  sang  hymns.  I  can't  remember  why  she  hated 
him  so  particularly  ! ' 

She  answered  his  faint  smile.  Lucy  was  a  child  for  both  of 
them.  Then  he  took  her  to  the  door  of  the  Parlour,  noticing,  as 
he  parted  from  her,  how  dingy  and  neglected  the  place  looked. 

Afterwards — directly  he  had  left  her — the  weight  of  his  pain 
which  hud  been  lightened  for  an  hour  descended  upon  him  again, 
shutting  the  doors  of  the  senses,  leaving  him  alone  within,  face 
to  face  with  the  little  figure  which  haunted  him  day  and  night. 
During  the  days  since  his  return  from  Paris  the  faculty  of  pro- 
jective  imagination,  which  had  endowed  his  childhood  with  a 
second  world,  and  peopled  it  with  the  incidents  and  creatures  of 
his  books,  had  grown  to  an  abnormal  strength.  Behind  the  stage 
on  which  he  was  now  painfully  gathering  together  the  fragments 
of  his  old  life,  it  created  for  him  another,  where,  amid  scenes 


392  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

richly  set  and  lit  with  perpetual  summer,  he  lived  with  Elise, 
walked  with  her,  watched  her,  lay  at  her  feet,  quarrelled  with 
her,  forgave  her.  His  drama  did  not  depend  on  memory  alone, 
or  rather  it  was  memory  passing  into  creation.  Within  its  bounds 
he  was  himself  and  not  himself ;  his  part  was  loftier  than  any  he 
had  ever  played  in  reality ;  his  eloquence  was  no  longer  tongue- 
tied — it  flowed  and  penetrated.  His  love  might  be  cruel,  but  he 
was  on  her  level,  nay,  her  master ;  he  could  reproach,  wrestle 
with,  command  her  ;  and  at  the  end  evoke  the  pardoning  flight 
into  each  other's  arms — confession — rapture. 

Till  suddenly,  poor  fool !  a  little  bolt  shot  from  the  bow  of 
memory — the  image  of  a  diligence  rattling  along  a  white  road — 
or  of  black  rain-beaten  quays,  with  their  lines  of  wavering  lamps 
— or  of  a  hideous  upper  room  with  blue  rep  furniture  where  one 
could  neither  move  nor  breathe — would  strike  his  dream  to  frag- 
ments, and  as  it  fell  to  ruins  within  him,  his  whole  being  would 
become  one  tumult  of  inarticulate  cries — delirium — anguish — 
with  which  the  self  at  the  heart  of  all  seemed  to  be  wrestling  for 
life. 

It  was  so  to-day  after  he  left  Dora.  First  the  vision,  the 
enchantment — then  the  agony,  the  sob  of  desolation  which  could 
hardly  be  kept  down.  He  saw  nothing  in  the  streets.  He  walked 
on  past  the  Exchange,  where  an  unusual  crowd  was  gathered, 
elbowing  his  way  through  it  mechanically,  but  not  in  truth  know- 
ing that  it  was  there. 

When  he  reached  the  shop  he  ran  past  John,  who  was  reading 
a  newspaper,  up  to  his  room  and  locked  the  door. 

About  an  hour  afterwards  Mr.  Ancrum  came  in,  all  excite- 
ment, a  batch  of  papers  under  his  arm. 

'  It  is  going  to  be  war,  John  !  War — I  tell  you  !  and  such  a 
war.  They'll  be  beaten,  those  braggarts,  if  there's  justice  in 
heaven.  The  streets  are  all  full ;  I  could  hardly  get  here ; 
everybody  talking  of  how  it  will  affect  Manchester.  Time 
enough  to  think  about  that !  What  a  set  of  selfish  beasts  we  all 
are  !  Where's  David  ? ' 

'  Come  in  an  hour  ago  ! '  said  John  sullenly ;  '  he  went 
upstairs.' 

'  Ah,  he  will  have  heard — the  placards  are  all  over  the  place.' 

The  minister  went  upstairs  and  knocked  at  David's  door. 

'  David  ! ' 

'All  right,'  said  a  voice  from  inside. 

'  David,  what  do  you  think  of  the  news  ?' 

'  What  news  ? '  after  a  pause. 

*  Why,  the  war,  man  !    Haven't  you  seen  the  evening  paper  ? ' 

No  answer.  The  minister  stood  listening  at  the  door.  Then 
a  tender  look  dawned  in  his  odd  grey  face. 

4  David,  look  here,  I'll  push  you  the  paper  under  the  door. 
You're  tired,  I  suppose — done  yourself  up  with  your  walk  ? ' 

'  I'll  be  down  to  supper,'  said  the  voice  from  inside,  shortly. 
'  Will  you  push  in  the  paper  ? ' 


CHAP,  xn  STORM  AND   STRESS  893 

The  minister  descended,  and  sat  by  himself  in.  the  kitchen 
thinking.  He  was  a  wiser  man  now  than  when  he  had  gone  out, 
and  not  only  as  to  that  reply  of  the  King  of  Prussia  to  the 
French  ultimatum  on  the  subject  of  the  Hohenzollern  candi- 
dature. 

For  he  had  met  Barbier  in  the  street.  How  to  keep  the 
voluble  Frenchman  from  bombarding  David  in  his  shattered 
state  had  been  one  of  Mr.  Ancrum's  most  anxious  occupations 
since  his  return.  It  had  been  done,  but  it  had  been  difficult. 
For  to  whom  did  David  owe  his  first  reports  of  Paris  if  not  to 
the  old  comrade  who  had  sent  him  there,  found  him  a  lodging, 
and  taught  him  to  speak  French  so  as  not  to  disgrace  himself 
and  his  country  ?  However,  Ancrum  had  found  means  to  inter- 
cept Barbier's  first  visit,  and  had  checkmated  his  attempts  ever 
since.  As  a  natural  result,  Barbier  was  extremely  irritable. 
Illness — stuff  !  The  lad  had  been  getting  into  scrapes — that  he 
would  swear. 

On  this  occasion,  when  Ancrum  stumbled  across  him,  he 
found  Barbier,  at  first  bubbling  over  with  the  war  news  ;  torn 
different  ways ;  now  abusing  the  Emperor  for  a  coclion  and  a 
fou,  prophesying  unlimited  disaster  for  France,  and  sneering  at 
the  ranting  crowds  on  the  boulevards  ;  the  next  moment  spouting 
the  same  anti-Prussian  madness  with  which  his  whole  unfortu- 
nate country  was  at  the  moment  infected.  In  the  midst  of  his 
gallop  of  talk,  however,  the  old  man  suddenly  stopped,  took  off 
his  hat,  and  running  one  excited  hand  through  his  bristling  tufts 
of  grey  hair  pointed  to  Ancrum  with  the  other. 

'•Haltela!'1  lie  said,  'I  know  what  your  young  rascal  has 
been  after.  I  know,  and  I'll  be  bound  you  don't.  Trust  a  lover 
for  hoodwinking  a  priest.  Come  along  here.' 

And  putting  his  arm  through  Ancrum's,  he  swept  him  away, 
repeating,  as  they  walked,  the  substance  of  a  letter  from  his 
precious  nephew,  in  which  the  Barbizon  episode  as  it  appeared  to 
the  inhabitants  of  No.  7  Rue  Chantal  and  to  the  students  of 
Taranne's  atelier  de  femmes  was  related,  with  every  embellish- 
ment of  witticism  and  blague  that  the  imagination  of  a  French 
rapin  could  suggest.  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  not  yet  re- 
stored,  according  to  the  writer,  to  the  atelier  which  she  adorned. 
'  On  criait  au  scandale,'  mainly  because  she  was  such  a  clever 
little  animal,  and  the  others  envied  and  hated  her.  She  had 
removed  to  a  studio  near  the  Luxembourg,  and  Taranne  was 
said  to  be  teaching  her  privately.  Meanwhile  Dubois  requested 
his  dear  uncle  to  supply  him  with  information  as  to  Tautre;  it 
would  be  gratefully  received  by  an  appreciative  circle.  As  for 
la  sceur  de  I'autre,  the  dear  uncle  no  doubt  knew  that  she  had 
migrated  to  the  studio  of  Monsieur  Montjoie,  an  artist  whose 
little  affairs  in  the  genre  had  already,  before  her  advent,  attained 
a  high  degree  of  interest  and  variety.  On  a  review  of  all  the 
circumstances,  the  dear  uncle  would  perhaps  pardon  the  writer 
If  he  were  less  disposed  than  before  to  accept  those  estimable 


894  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

views  of  the  superiority  of  the  English  morale  to  the  French, 
which  had  been  so  ably  impressed  upon  him  during  his  visit  to 
Manchester. 

For  after  a  very  short  stay  at  Brussels  the  nephew  had  boldly 
and  suddenly  pushed  over  to  England,  and  had  spent  a  fortnight 
in  Barbier's  lodgings  reconnoitering  his  uncle.  As  to  the  uncle. 
Xavier  had  struck  him,  on  closer  inspection,  as  one  of  the  most 
dissolute  young  reprobates  he  had  ever  beheld.  He  had  preached 
to  him  like  a  father,  holding  up  to  him  the  image  of  his  own 
absent  favourite,  David  Grieve,  as  a  brilliant  illustration  of  what 
could  be  achieved  even  in  this  wicked  world  by  morals  and 
capacity.  And  in  the  intervals  he  had  supplied  the  creature 
with  money  and  amused  himself  with  his  gamin erie  from  morning 
till  night.  On  their  parting  the  uncle  had  with  great  frankness 
confessed  to  the  nephew  the  general  opinion  he  had  formed  of 
his  character  ;  all  the  same  they  were  now  embarked  on  a  tolera- 
bly frequent  correspondence ;  and  Dubois'  ultimate  chance  of 
obtaining  his  uncle's  savings,  on  the  chasse  of  which  he  had 
come  to  England,  would  have  seemed  to  the  cool  observer  by  no 
means  small. 

'But  now,  look  here,'  said  Barbier,  taking  off  his  spectacles 
to  wipe  away  the  '  merry  tear '  which  dimmed  them,  after  the 
recapitulation  of  Xavier's  last  letter,  '  no  more  nonsense  !  I 
come  and  have  it  out  with  that  young  man.  I  sent  him  to  Paris, 
and  I'll  know  what  he  did  there.  He's  not  made  of  burnt  sugar. 
Of  course  he's  broken  his  heart — we  all  do.  Serve  him  right.' 

'It's  easy  to  laugh,'  said  Ancrum  dryly,  '  only  these  young 
fellows  have  sometimes  an  uncomfortable  way  of  vindicating 
their  dignity  by  shooting  themselves.' 

Barbier  started  and  looked  interrogative. 

'  Now  suppose  you  listen  to  me,'  said  the  minister. 

And  the  two  men  resumed  their  patrol  of  Albert  Square  while 
Ancrum  described  his  rescue  of  David.  The  story  was  simply 
told  but  impressive.  Barbier  whistled,  stared,  and  surrendered. 
Nay,  he  went  to  the  other  extreme.  He  loved  the  absurd,  but 
he  loved  the  romantic  more.  An  hour  before,  David's  adven- 
tures had  been  to  him  a  subject  of  comic  opera.  As  Ancrum 
talked,  they  took  on  '  the  grand  style,'  and  at  the  end  he  could 
no  more  have  taken  liberties  with  his  old  pupil  than  with  the 
hero  of  the  Nuit  de  Mai.  He  became  excited,  sympathetic,  de- 
clamatory, tore  open  old  sores,  and  Mr.  Ancrum  had  gre?*t  diffi- 
culty in  getting  rid  of  him. 

So  now  the  minister  was  sitting  at  home  meditating.  Through 
the  atmosphere  of  mockery  with  which  Dubois  had  invested  tha 
story  he  saw  the  outlines  of  it  with  some  clearness. 

CHAPTER  XIII 

IN  the  midst  of  his  meditations,  however,  the  minister  did  not 
forget  to  send  John  out  for  David's  supper,  and  when  David 


CHAP,  xiii  STORM  AND  STRESS  895 

appeared,  white,  haggard,  and  exhausted,  it  was  to  jind  himself 
thought  for  with  a  care  like  a  woman's.  The  lad,  being  sick  and 
irritable,  showed  more  resentment  than  gratitude  ;  pushed  away 
his  food,  looking  sombrely  the  while  at  the  dry  bread  and  tea 
which  formed  the  minister's  invariable  evening  meal  as  though 
to  ask  when  he  was  to  be  allowed  his  rational  freedom  again  to 
eat  or  fast  as  he  pleased.  He  scarcely  answered  Ancrum's  re- 
marks about  the  war,  and  finally  he  got  up  heavily,  saying  he 
was  going  out. 

'You  ought  to  be  in  your  bed,'  said  Ancrum,  protesting 
almost  for  the  first  time,  '  and  it's  there  you  will  be — tied  by  the 
leg — if  you  don't  take  a  decent  care  of  yourself. ' 

David  took  no  notice  and  went.  He  dragged  himself  to  the 
German  Athenaeum,  of  which  he  had  become  a  member  in  the 
first  flush  of  his  inheritance.  There  were  the  telegrams  from 
Paris,  and  an  eager  crowd  reading  and  discussing  them.  As  he 
pushed  his  way  in  at  last  and  read,  the  whole  scene  rose  before 
him  as  though  he  were  there — the  summer  boulevards  with  their 
trees  and  kiosks,  the  moving  crowds,  the  shouts,  the  '  Marseil- 
laise ' — the  blind  infectious  madness  of  it  all.  And  one  short 
fortnight  ago,  what  man  in  Europe  could  have  guessed  that  such 
a  day  was  already  on  the  knees  of  the  gods  ? 

Afterwards,  on  the  way  to  the  Parlour,  he  talked  to  Elise 
about  it, — placing  her  on  the  boulevards  with  the  rest,  and 
himself  beside  her  to  guard  her  from  the  throng.  Hour  by  hour, 
this  morbid  gift  of  his,  though  it  tortured  him,  provided  an 
outlet  for  passion,  saved  him  from  numbness  and  despair. 

When  he  got  to  Dora's  sitting-room  he  found  Daddy  sitting 
there,  smoking  sombrely  over  the  empty  grate.  He  had  expected 
a  flood  of  questions,  and  had  steeled  himself  to  meet  them. 
Nothing  of  the  sort.  The  old  man  took  very  little  notice  of  him 
and  his  travels.  Considering  the  petulant  advice  with  which 
Daddy  had  sent  him  off,  David  was  astonished  and,  in  the  end, 
piqued.  He  recovered  the  tongue  which  he  had  lost  for  Ancrum, 
and  was  presently  discussing  the  war  like  anybody  else.  Remi- 
niscences of  the  talk  amid  which  he  had  lived  during  those  Paris 
weeks  came  back  to  them  ;  and  he  repeated  some  of  them  which 
bore  on  the  present  action  of  Napoleon  III.  and  his  ministry, 
with  a  touch  of  returning  fluency.  He  was,  in  fact,  playing  for 
Daddy's  attention. 

Daddy  watched  him  silently  with  a  wild  and  furtive  eye. 
At  last,  looking  round  to  see  whether  Dora  was  there,  and  find- 
ing that  she  had  gone  out,  he  laid  a  lean  long  hand  on  David's 
knee. 

'  That'll  do,  Davy.  Davy,  why  were  you  all  that  time 
away  ? ' 

The  young  man  drew  himself  up  suddenly,  brought  back  to 
realities  from  this  first  brief  moment  of  something  like  forgetful- 
ness.  He  tried  for  his  common  excuse  of  illness  ;  but  it  stuck  in 
his  throat. 


396  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  in 

'I  can't  tell  you,  Daddy,'  he  said  at  last,  slowly.  'I  might 
tell  you  lies,  but  I  won't.  It  concerns  myself  alone.' 

Daddy  still  bent  forward,  his  peaked  wizard's  face  peering 
at  his  companion. 

'  You've  been  in  trouble,  Davy  ?' 

'  Yes,  Daddy.     But  if  you  ask  me  questions  I  shall  go.' 

He  spoke  with  a  sudden  fierce  resolution. 

Daddy  paid  no  attention.  He  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair 
with  a  long  breath. 

'  Bedad,  and  I  knew  it,  Davy  !  But  sorrow  a  bit  o'  pity  will 
you  get  out  o'  me,  my  boy — sorrow  a  bit ! ' 

He  lay  staring  at  his  companion  with  a  glittering  hostile 
look. 

4  By  the  powers  ! '  he  said  presently,  '  to  be  a  gossoon  of 
twenty  again  and  throubled  about  a  woman  ! ' 

David  sprang  up. 

'  Well,  Daddy,  I'll  bid  you  good  night  !  I  wanted  to  hear 
something  about  your  own  affairs,  which  don't  seem  to  be  flour- 
ishing. But  I'll  wait  till  Miss  Dora's  at  home.' 

'  Sit  down,  sit  down  Again  ! '  cried  Lomax  angrily,  catching 
him  by  the  arm.  '  I'll  not  meddle  with  you.  Yes,  we're  in  a  bad 
way,  a  deuced  bad  way,  if  you  listen  to  Dora.  If  it  weren't  for 
her  I'd  have  walked  myself  off  long  ago  and  let  the  devil  take  the 
creditors. ' 

David  sat  down  and  tried  to  get  at  the  truth.  But  Daddy 
turned  restive,  and  now  invited  the  traveller's  talk  he  had  before 
repelled.  He  fell  into  his  own  recollections  of  the  Paris  streets 
in  '48,  and  his  vanity  enjoyed  showing  this  slip  of  a  fellow  that 
old  Lomax  was  well  acquainted  with  France  and  French  politics 
before  he  was  born. 

Presently  Dora  came  in,  saw  that  her  father  had  been  beguiled 
into  foregoing  his  usual  nocturnal  amusements,  and  looked  soft 
gratitude  at  David.  But  as  for  him,  he  had  never  realised  so 
vividly  the  queer  aloofness  and  slipperiness  of  Daddy's  nature, 
nor  the  miserable  insecurity  of  Dora's  life.  Such  men  were  not 
meant  to  have  women  depending  on  them. 

He  went  downstairs  pondering  what  could  be  done  for  the  old 
vagabond.  Drink  had  indeed  made  ravages  since  he  had  seen 
him  last.  For  Dora's  sake  the  young  man  recalled  with  eagerness 
some  statements  and  suggestions  in  a  French  treatise  on  '  L'Al- 
coolisme '  he  chanced  to  have  been  turning  over  among  his  foreign 
scientific  stock.  Dora,  no  doubt,  had  invoked  the  parson  ;  he 
would  endeavour  to  bring  in  the  doctor.  And  there  was  a  young 
one,  a  frequenter  of  the  stall  in  Birmingham  Street,  not  as  yet 
overburdened  with  practice,  who  occurred  to  him  as  clever  and 
likely  to  help. 

Nor  did  he  forget  his  purpose.  The  very  next  morning  he  got 
hold  of  the  young  man  in  question.  Out  came  the  French  book, 
which  contained  the  record  of  a  famous  Frenchman's  experiments, 
and  the  two  hung  over  it  together  in  David's  little  back  room. 


CHAP,  xni  STORM  AND  STRESS  397 

till  the  doctor's  views  of  booksellers  and  their  probable  minds 
were  somewhat  enlarged,  and  David  felt  something  of  the  old 
intellectual  glow  which  these  scientific  problems  of  mind  and 
matter  had  awakened  in  him  during  the  winter.  Then  he  walked 
his  physician  off  to  Daddy  during  the  dinner  hour  and  boldly 
introduced  him  as  a  friend.  The  young  doctor,  having  been 
forewarned,  treated  the  situation  admirably,  took  up  a  jaunty 
and  jesting  tone,  and,  finally,  putting  morals  entirely  aside, 
invited  Daddy  to  consider  himself  as  a  scientific  case,  and  deal 
with  himself  as  such  for  the  benefit  of  knowledge. 

Daddy  was  feeling  ill  and  depressed  ;  David  struck  him  as  an 
'  impudent  varmint,'  and  the  doctor  as  little  better  ;  but  the  lad's 
solicitude  nevertheless  flattered  the  old  featherbrain,  and  in  the 
end  he  fell  into  a  burst  of  grandiloquent  and  self-excusing  confi- 
dence. The  doctor  played  him  ;  prescribed  ;  and  when  he  and 
David  left  together  it  really  seemed  as  though  the  old  man  from 
sheer  curiosity  about  and  interest  in  his  own  symptoms  would 
probably  make  an  attempt  to  follow  the  advice  given  him. 

Dora  came  in  while  the  three  were  still  joking  and  discussing. 
Her  face  clouded  as  she  listened,  and  when  David  and  the  doctor 
left  she  gave  them  a  cool  and  shrinking  good-bye  which  puzzled 
David. 

Daddy,  however,  after  a  little  while,  mended  considerably, 
developed  an  enthusiasm  for  his  self-appointed  doctor,  and,  what 
was  still  better,  a  strong  excitement  about  his  own  affairs.  When 
it  came  to  the  stage  of  a  loan  for  the  meeting  of  the  more  pressing 
liabilities,  of  fresh  and  ingenious  efforts  to  attract  customers, 
and  of  a  certain  gleam  of  returning  prosperity,  David's  concern 
for  his  old  friend  very  much  dropped  again.  His  former  vivid 
interest  in  the  human  scene  and  the  actors  in  it,  as  such,  was  not 
yet  recovered  ;  in  these  weeks  weariness  and  lassitude  overtook 
each  reviving  impulse  and  faculty  in  turn. 

He  was  becoming  more  and  more  absorbed,  too,  by  the  news 
from  France.  Its  first  effect  upon  him  was  one  of  irritable  repul- 
sion. Barbier  and  Hugo  had  taught  him  to  loathe  the  Empire  ; 
and  had  not  he  and  she  read  Les  Chdtiments  together,  and 
mocked  the  Emperor's  carriage  as  it  passed  them  in  the  streets? 
The  French  telegrams  in  the  English  papers,  with  their  accounts 
of  the  vapouring  populace,  the  wild  rhetoric  in  the  Chamber,  and 
the  general  outburst  of  fanfaronnade,  seemed  to  make  the 
French  nation  one  with  the  Empire  in  its  worst  aspects,  and,  as 
we  can  all  remember,  set  English  teeth  on  edge.  David  devoured 
the  papers  day  by  day,  and  his  antagonism  grew,  partly  because, 
in  spite  of  that  strong  gravitation  of  his  mind  towards  things 
expansive,  emotional,  and  rhetorical,  the  essential  paste  of  him 
was  not  French  but  English — but  mostly  because  of  other  and 
stronger  reasons  of  which  he  was  hardly  conscious.  During  that 
fortnight  of  his  agony  in  Paris  all  that  sympathetic  bond  between 
the  great  city  and  himself  which  had  been  the  source  of  so  much 
pleasure  and  excitement  to  him  during  his  early  days  with  Elise 


398  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ra 

had  broken  down.  The  glamour  of  happiness  torn  away,  he  had 
seen,  beneath  the  Paris  of  his  dream,  a  greedy  brutal  Paris  from 
which  his  sick  senses  shrank  in  fear  and  loathing.  The  grace, 
the  spell,  was  gone — he  was  alone  and  miserable  ! — and  amid  the 
gaiety,  the  materialism,  the  selfish  vice  of  the  place  he  had 
moved  for  days,  an  alien  and  an  enemy,  the  love  within  him 
turning  to  hate. 

So  now  his  mortal  pain  revenged  itself.  They  would  be  beaten 
— this  depraved  and  enervated  people  !— and  his  feverish  heart 
rejoiced.  But  Elise  ?  His  lips  quivered.  What  did  the  war 
matter  to  her  except  so  far  as  its  inconveniences  were  concerned  ? 
"Wnat  had  lapatrie  any  more  than  T amour  to  do  with  art?  He 
put  the  question  to  her  in  his  wild  evening  walks.  It  angered 
him  that  as  the  weeks  swept  on,  and  the  great  thunderbolts 
began  to  fall — Wissembourg,  Forbach,  Worth — his  imagination 
would  sometimes  show  her  to  him  agitated  and  in  tears.  No 
pity  for  him  !  why  this  sorrow  for  France  ?  Absurd  !  let  her  go 
paint  while  the  world  loved  and  fought.  In  '48,  while  monarchy 
and  republic  were  wrestling  it  out  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  was  not 
the  landscape  painter  Chintreuil  quietly  sketching  all  the  time 
just  outside  one  of  the  gates  of  the  city  ?  There  was  the  artist 
for  you. 

Meanwhile  the  growing  excitement  of  the  war,  heightened 
and  poisoned  by  this  reaction  of  his  personality,  combined  with 
his  painful  efforts  to  recover  his  business  to  make  him  for  a  time 
more  pale  and  gaunt  than  ever.  Ancrum  remonstrated  in  vain. 
He  would  go  his  way. 

One  evening — it  was  the  day  after  Worth — he  was  striding 
blindly  up  the  Oxford  Koad  when  he  ran  against  a  man  at  the 
corner  of  a  side  street.  It  was  Barbier,  coming  out  for  the  last 
news. 

Barbier  started,  swore,  caught  him  by  the  arm,  then  fell  back 
in  amazement. 

'  (Test  toi  ?  Ion  Dieuf 

David,  who  had  hitherto  avoided  his  old  companion  with  the 
utmost  ingenuity,  began  hurriedly  to  inquire  whether  he  was 
going  to  look  at  the  evening's  telegram. 

'  Yes — no — what  matter  ?  You  can  tell  me.  David,  my  lad, 
Ancrum  told  me  you  had  been  ill,  but — ' 

The  old  man  slipped  his  arm  through  that  of  the  youth  and 
looked  at  him  fixedly.  His  own  face  was  all  furrowed  and 
drawn,  the  eyes  red. 

'  Oui ;  tu  es  change,'1  he  said  at  last  with  a  sudden  quivering 
breath,  almost  a  sob,  '  like  everything, — like  the  world  ! ' 

And  hanging  down  his  head  he  drew  the  lad  on,  down  the 
little  street,  towards  his  lodging. 

'  Come  in  !  I'll  ask  no  questions.  Oh,  come  in  !  I  have  the 
French  papers  ;  for  three  hours  I  have  been  reading  them  alone. 
Come  in  or  I  shall  go  mad  ! ' 

And  they  discussed  the  war,  the  political  prospect,  and  Bar- 


CHAP,  xin  STORM  AND   STRESS  399 

bier's  French  letters  till  nearly  midnight.  All  the  exile's  nation- 
ality had  revived,  and  so  lost  was  he  in  weeping  over  France  he 
had  scarcely  breath  left  wherewith  to  curse  the  Empire.  In  the 
presence  of  a  grief  so  true,  so  poignant,  wherein  all  the  man's 
little  tricks  and  absurdities  had  for  the  moment  melted  out  of 
sight,  David's  own  seared  and  bitter  feeling  could  find  no  voice. 
He  said  not  a  word  that  could  jar  on  his  old  friend.  And  Bar- 
bier,  like  a  child,  took  his  sympathy  for  granted  and  abused  the 
'  heartless  hypocritical '  English  press  to  him  with  a  will. 

The  days  rushed  on.  David  read  the  English  papers  in  town, 
then  walked  up  late  to  Barbier's  lodgings  to  read  a  French  batch 
and  talk.  Gravelotte  was  over,  the  siege  was  approaching.  In 
that  strange  inner  life  of  his,  David  with  Elise  beside  him  looked 
on  at  the  crashing  trees  in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  at  the  long 
lines  of  carts  laden  with  household  stuff  and  fugitives  from  the 
zone  militaire  flocking  into  Paris,  at  the  soldiers  and  horses 
camping  in  the  Tuileries  Gardens,  at  the  distant  smoke-clouds 
amid  the  woods  of  Issy  and  Meudon,  as  village  after  village 
flamed  to  ruins. 

One  night — it  was  a  day  or  two  after  Sedan — in  a  corner  of 
the  Constitutionnel,  he  found  a  little  paragraph  : — 

'  M.  Henri  Regnault  and  M.  Clairin,  leaving  their  studio  at 
Tangiers  to  the  care  of  the  French  Consul,  have  returned  to 
Paris  to  offer  themselves  for  military  service,  from  which,  as 
holder  of  the  prix  de  Rome,  M.  Regnault  is  legally  exempt.  To 
praise  such  an  act  would  be  to  insult  its  authors.  France — our 
bleeding  France ! — does  but  take  stern  note  that  her  sous  are 
faithful.' 

David  threw  the  paper  down,  made  an  excuse  to  Barbier,  and 
went  out.  He  could  not  talk  to  Barbier,  to  whom  everything 
must  be  explained  from  the  beginning,  and  his  heart  was  full. 
He  wandered  out  towards  Fallowfield  under  a  moon  which  gave 
beauty  and  magic  even  to  these  low,  begrimed  streets,  these 
jarring,  incongruous  buildings,  thinking  of  Regnault  and  that 
unforgotten  night  beside  the  Seine.  The  young  artist's  passage 
through  the  Louvre,  the  towering  of  his  great  head  above  the 
crowd  in  the  '  Trois  Rats,'  and  that  outburst  under  the  moon- 
light— everything,  every  tone,  every  detail,  returned  upon  him. 

'  The  great  France — the  undying  France — ' 

And  now  for  France — ah  ! — David  divined  the  eagerness,  the 
passion,  with  which  it  had  been  done.  He  was  nearer  to  the 
artist  than  he  had  been  two  months  before — nearer  to  all  great 
and  tragic  things.  His  recognition  of  the  fact  had  in  it  the 
start  of  a  strange  joy. 

So  moved  was  he,  and  in  such  complex  ways,  that  as  he 
thought  of  Regnault  with  that  realising  imagination  which  was 
his  gift,  the  whole  set  of  his  feeling  towards  France  and  the  war 
wavered  and  changed.  The  animosity,  the  drop  of  personal  gall 
in  his  heart,  disappeared,  conjured  by  Regnault's  look,  by  Reg- 
nault's  act.  The  one  heroic  figure  he  had  seen  in  France  began 


400  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

now  to  stand  to  him  for  the  nation.  He  walked  home  doing 
penance  in  his  heart,  passionately  renewing  the  old  love,  the  old 
homage,  in  this  awful  presence  of  a  stricken  people  at  bay. 

And  Elise  came  to  him,  in  the  moonlight,  leaning  upon  him, 
with  soft,  approving  eyes — 

Ah  1  where  was  she — where — in  this  whirlwind  of  the  national 
fate  ?  where  was  her  frail  life  hidden  ?  was  she  still  in  this  Paris, 
so  soon  to  be  '  begirt  with  armies '  ? 

Four  days  later  Barbier  sent  a  note  to  Ancrum  :  *  Come  and 
see  me  this  afternoon  at  six  o'clock.  Say  nothing  to  Grieve.' 

A  couple  of  hours  afterwards  Ancrum  came  slowly  home  to 
Birmingham  Street,  where  he  was  still  lodging.  David  had  just 
put  up  the  shop-shutters,  John  had  departed,  and  his  employer 
was  about  to  retire  to  supper  and  his  books  in  the  back 
kitchen. 

Ancrum  went  in  and  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fire  which 
John  had  just  made  for  the  kettle  and  the  minister's  tea,  when 
David  came  in  with  an  armful  of  books  and  shut  the  door  be- 
hind him.  Ancrum  let  him  put  down  his  cargo,  and  then 
walked  up  to  him. 

'David,'  he  said,  laying  his  hand  with  a  timid  gesture  on  the 
other's  shoulder,  '  Barbier  has  had  some  letters  from  Paris  to-day 
— the  last  he  will  get  probably — and  among  them  a  letter  from 
his  nephew.' 

David  started,  turned  sharp  round,  shaking  off  the  hand. 

'  It  contains  some  news  which  Barbier  thinks  you  ought  to 
know.  Mademoiselle  Elise  Delaunay  has  married  suddenly — 
married  her  cousin,  Mr.  Pimodan,  a  young  doctor.' 

The  shock  blanched  every  atom  of  colour  from  David's  face. 
He  tried  wildly  to  control  himself,  to  brave  it  out  with  a  des- 
perate '  Why  not?'  But  speech  failed  him.  He  walked  over  to 
the  mantelpiece  and  leant  against  it.  The  room  swam  with 
him,  and  the  only  impression  of  which  for  a  moment  or  two  he 
was  conscious  was  that  of  the  cheerful  singing  of  the  kettle. 

'She  would  not  leave  Paris,'  said  Ancrum  in  a  low  voice, 
standing  beside  him.  'People  tried  to  persuade  her — nothing 
would  induce  her.  Then  this  young  man,  who  is  said  to  have 
been  in  love  with  her  for  years,  urged  her  to  marry  him — to 
accept  his  protection  really,  in  view  of  all  that  might  come. 
Dubois  thinks  she  refused  several  times,  but  anyway  two  days 
ago  they  were  married,  civilly,  with  only  the  legal  witnesses.' 

David  moved  about  the  various  things  on  the  mantelpiece 
with  restless  fingers.  Then  he  straightened  himself. 

'Is  that  all?'  he  asked,  looking  at  the  minister. 

'All,'  said  Ancrum,  who  had,  of  course,  no  intention  of 
repeating  any  of  Dubois'  playful  embroideries  on  the  facts. 
'You  will  be  glad,  won't  you,  that  she  should  have  some  one  to 
protect  her  in  such  a  strait  ? ' — he  added,  after  a  minute's  pause, 
his  eyes  on  the  fire. 


CHAP,  xiir  STORM   AND  STRESS  401 

'Yes,'  said  the  other  after  a  moment.  'Thank  you.  Won't 
you  have  your  tea  ? ' 

Mr.  Ancrum  swallowed  his  emotion,  and  they  sat  down  to  table 
in  silence.  David  played  with  some  food,  took  one  thing  up  after 
another,  laid  it  down,  and  at  last  sprang  up  and  seized  his  hat. 

'  Going  out  again  ? '  asked  the  minister,  trembling,  he  knew 
not  why. 

The  lad  muttered  something.  Instinctively  the  little  lame 
fellow,  who  was  closest  to  the  door,  rushed  to  it  and  threw 
himself  against  it. 

'David,  don't — don't  go  out  alone — let  me  go  with  you  ! ' 

'I  want  to  go  out  alone,'  said  David,  liis  lips  shaking. 
'  Why  do  you  interfere  with  me?' 

4  Because — '  and  the  short  figure  drew  itself  up,  the  minister's 
voice  took  a  stern  deep  note,  '  because  when  a  man  has  once 
contemplated  the  sin  of  self-murder,  those  about  him  have  no 
right  to  behave  as  though  he  were  still  like  other  innocent  and 
happy  people  ! ' 

David  stood  silent  a  moment,  every  limb  trembling.  Then 
his  mouth  set,  and  he  made  a  step  forward,  one  arm  raised. 

'  Oh,  yes  ! '  cried  Ancrum,  'you  may  fling  me  out  of  the  way. 
My  weakness  and  deformity  are  no  match  for  you.  Do,  if  you 
have  the  heart !  Do  you  think  I  don't  know  that  I  rescued  you 
from  despair — that  I  drew  you  out  of  the  very  jaws  of  death  ? 
Do  you  think  I  don't  guess  that  the  news  I  have  just  given  you 
withers  the  heart  in  your  breast  ?  You  imagine,  I  suppose,  that 
because  I  am  deformed  and  a  Sunday-school  teacher,  because 
I  think  something  of  religion,  and  can't  read  your  French 
books,  I  cannot  enter  into  what  a  man  is  and  feels.  Try  me  ! 
When  you  were  a  little  boy  in  my  class,  my  life  was  already 
crushed  in  me — my  tragedy  was  over.  I  have  come  close  to 
passion  and  to  sin  ;  I'm  not  afraid  of  yours  !  You  are  alive  here 
to-night,  David  Grieve,  because  I  went  to  look  for  you  on  the 
mountains — lost  sheep  that  you  were — and  found  you,  by  God's 
mercy.  You  never  thanked  me — I  knew  you  couldn't.  Instead 
of  your  thanks  I  demand  your  confidence,  here — now.  •  Break 
down  this  silence  between  us.  Tell  me  what  you  have  done  to 
bring  your  life  to  this  pass.  You  have  no  father — 1  speak  in  his 
place,  and  I  deserve  that  you  should  trust  and  listen  to  me  !' 

David  looked  at  him  with  amazement — at  the  worn  misshapen 
head  thrown  haughtily  back— at  the  arms  folded  across  the  chest. 
Then  his  pride  gave  way,  and  that  intolerable  smart  within  could 
no  longer  hide  itself.  His  soul  melted  within  him  ;  tears  began 
to  rain  over  his  cheeks.  He  tottered  to  the  fire  and  sat  down, 
instinctively  spreading  his  hands  to  the  blaze,  that  word  '  father' 
echoing  in  his  ears  ;  and  by  midnight  Mr.  Ancrum  knew  all  the 
story,  or  as  much  of  it  as  man  could  tell  to  man. 

From  this  night  of  confession  and  of  storm  there  emerged  at 
least  one  result— the  beginnings  of  a  true  and  profitable  bond 


402  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

between  David  and  Ancrum.  Hitherto  there  had  been  expendi- 
ture of  interest  and  affection  on  the  minister's  side,  and  a  certain 
responsiveness  and  friendly  susceptibility  on  David's ;  but  no 
true  understanding  and  contact,  mind  with  mind.  But  in  these 
agitated  hours  of  such  talk  as  belongs  only  to  the  rare  crises  of 
life,  not  only  did  Ancrum  gain  an  insight  into  David's  inmost 
nature,  with  all  its  rich,  unripe  store  of  feelings  and  powers, 
deeper  than  any  he  had  possessed  before,  but  David,  breaking 
through  the  crusts  of  association,  getting  beyond  and  beneath 
the  Sunday-school  teacher  and  minister)  came  for  the  first  time 
upon  the  real  man  in  his  friend,  apart  from  trappings — cast  off 
the  old  sense  of  pupilage,  and  found  a  brother  instead  of  a  monitor. 

There  came  a  moment  when  Ancrum,  laying  his  hand  on 
David's  knee,  told  his  own  story  in  a  few  bare  sentences,  each  of 
them,  as  it  were,  lightning  on  a  dark  background,  revealing  some 
few  things  with  a  ghastly  plainness,  only  to  let  silence  and  mys- 
tery close  again  upon  the  whole.  And  there  came  another 
moment  when  the  little  minister,  carried  out  of  himself,  fell  into 
incoherent  sentences,  full  of  obscurity,  yet  often  full  of  beauty, 
in  which  for  the  first  time  David  came  near  to  the  living  voice  of 
religion  speaking  in  its  purest,  intensest  note.  Christ  was  the 
burden  of  it  all ;  the  religion  of  pain,  sacrifice,  immortality  ;  the 
religion  of  chastity  and  self- repression. 

'  Life  goes  from  test  to  test,  David ;  it's  like  any  other 
business — the  more  you  know  the  more's  put  on  you.  And 
this  test  of  the  man  with  the  woman — there's  no  other  cuts 
so  deep.  Aye,  it  parts  the  sheep  from  the  goats.  A  man's 
failed  in  it — lost  his  footing — rolled  into  hell,  before  he  knows 
where  he  is.  "On  this  stone  if  a  man  fall" — I  often  put 
those  words  to  it — there's  all  meanings  in  Scripture.  Yes,  you've 
stumbled,  David — stumbled  badly,  but  not  more.  There's  mercy 
in  it !  You  must  rise  again — you  can.  Accept  yourself  ;  accept 
the  sin  even  ;  bear  with  yourself  and  go  forward.  That's  what 
the  Church  says.  Nothing  can  be  undone,  but  break  your  pride, 
do  penance,  and  all  can  be  forgiven. 

'  But  you  don't  admit  the  sin  ?  A  man  has  a  right  to  the 
satisfaction  of  his  own  instincts.  You  asked  a  free  consent  and 
got  it.  "What  is  law  but  a  convention  for  miserable  people  who 
don't  know  how  to  love  ?  Who  was  injured  ? 

'  David,  that's  the  question  of  a  fool.  "Were  you  and  she  the 
first  man  and  woman  in  the  world  that  ever  loved  ?  That's 
always  the  way  ;  each  man  imagines  the  matter  is  still  for  his 
deciding,  and  he  can  no  more  decide  it  than  he  can  tamper  with 
the  fact  that  fire  burns  or  water  drowns.  All  these  centuries  the 
human  animal  has  fought  with  the  human  soul.  And  step  by 
step  the  soul  has  registered  her  victories.  She  has  won  them 
only  by  feeling  for  the  law  and  finding  it — uncovering,  bringing 
into  light,  the  firm  rocks  beneath  her  feet.  And  on  these  rocks 
she  rears  her  landmarks — marriage,  the  family,  the  State,  the 
Church.  Neglect  them,  and  you  sink  into  the  quagmire  from 


CHAP,  xin  STORM  AND  STRESS  408 

which  the  soul  of  the  race  has  been  for  generations  struggling  to 
save  you.  Dispute  them  !  overthrow  them — yes,  if  you  can ! 
You  have  about  as  much  chance  with  them  as  you  have  with  the 
other  facts  and  laws  amid  which  you  live — physical  or  chemical 
or  biological. 

'  I  speak  after  the  manner  of  men.  If  I  were  to  speak  after 
the  manner  of  a  Christian,  I  should  say  other  things.  I  should 
ask  how  a  man  dare  pluck  from  the  Lord's  hand,  for  his  own 
wild  and  reckless  use,  a  soul  and  body  for  which  He  died  ;  how 
he,  the  Lord's  bondsman,  dare  steal  his  joy,  carrying  it  off  by 
himself  into  the  wilderness,  like  an  animal  his  prey,  instead  of 
asking  it  at  the  hands,  and  under  the  blessing,  of  his  Master  ; 
how  he  dare — a  man  under  orders,  and  member  of  the  Lord's 
body — forget  the  whole  in  his  greed  for  the  one — eternity  in  his 
thirst  for  the  present  ! 

'  But  no  matter.  Christ  is  nothing  to  you,  nor  Scripture,  nor 
the  Church— 

The  minister  broke  off  abruptly,  his  lined  face  working  with 
emotion  and  prayer.  David  said  nothing.  In  this  stage  of  the 
conversation — the  stage,  as  it  were,  of  judgment  and  estimate — 
he  could  take  no  part.  The  time  for  it  with  him  had  not  yet 
come.  He  had  exhausted  all  his  force  in  the  attempt  to  explain 
himself — an  attempt  which  began  in  fragmentary  question  and 
answer,  and  ended  on  his  part  in  the  rush  of  a  confidence,  an 
'  Apologia,'  representing,  in  truth,  that  first  reflex  action  of  the 
mind  upon  experience,  whence  healing  and  spiritual  growth  were 
ultimately  to  issue.  But  for  the  moment  he  could  carry  the 
process  no  farther.  He  sat  crouched  over  the  flickering  fire,  say- 
ing nothing,  letting  Ancrum  soliloquise  as  he  pleased.  His  mind 
surged  to  and  fro,  indeed,  as  Ancrum  talked  between  the  poles 
of  repulsion  and  response.  His  nature  was  not  as  Ancrum's,  and 
every  now  and  then  the  quick  critical  intellect  flashed  through 
his  misery,  detecting  an  assumption,  probing  an  hypothesis.  But 
in  general  his  feeling  gave  way  more  and  more.  That  moral 
sensitiveness  in  him  which  in  its  special  nature  was  a  special 
inheritance,  the  outcome  of  a  long  individualist  development 
under  the  conditions  of  English  Protestantism,  made  him  from 
the  first  the  natural  prey  of  Ancrum's  spiritual  passion.  As  soon 
as  a  true  contact  between  them  was  set  up,  David  began  to  feel 
the  religious  temper  and  life  in  Ancrum  draw  him  like  a  magnet. 
Not  the  forms  of  the  thing,  but  the  thing  itself.  In  it,  or  some- 
thing like  it,  as  he  listened,  his  heart  suspected,  for  the  first 
time,  the  only  possible  refuge  from  the  agony  of  passion,  the 
only  possible  escape  from  this  fever  of  desire,  jealousy,  and  love, 
in  which  he  was  consumed. 

At  the  end  he  let  Ancrum  lead  him  up  to  bed  and  give  him 
the  bromide  the  Paris  doctor  had  prescribed.  When  Ancrum 
softly  put  his  head  in,  half  an  hour  later,  he  was  heavily  asleep. 
Ancrum's  face  gleamed  ;  he  stole  into  the  room  carrying  a  rug 
and  a  pillow ;  and  when  David  woke  in  the  morning  it  was 


404  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

to  see  the  twisted  form  of  the  little  minister  stretched  still  and 
soldierlike  beside  him  on  the  floor. 


CHAPTER    XIV 

FROM  that  waking  David  rose  and  went  about  his  work  another 
man.  As  he  moved  about  in  the  shop  or  in  the  streets,  he  was 
conscious  of  a  gulf  between  his  present  self  and  his  self  of  yester- 
day, which  he  could  hardly  explain.  Simply  the  whole  atmosphere 
and  temperature  of  the  soul  was  other,  was  different.  He  could 
have  almost  supposed  that  some  process  had  gone  on  within  him 
during  the  unconsciousness  of  sleep,  of  which  he  was  now  feeling 
the  results  ;  which  had  carried  him  on,  without  his  knowing  it,  to 
a  point  in  the  highroad  of  life,  far  removed  from  that  point  where 
he  had  stood  when  his  talk  with  Ancrum  began.  That  world  of 
enervating  illusion,  that  'kind  of  ghastly  dreaminess,'  as  John 
Sterling  called  it,  in  which  since  his  return  he  had  lived  with 
Elise,  was  gone,  he  knew  not  how — swept  away  like  a  cloud  from 
the  brain,  a  mist  from  the  eyes.  The  sense  of  catastrophe,  of 
things  irrevocable  and  irreparable,  the  premature  ageing  of  the 
whole  man,  remained — only  the  fever  and  the  restlessness  were 
past.  Memory,  indeed,  was  not  affected.  In  some  sort  the 
scenes  of  his  French  experience  would  be  throughout  his  life  a 
permanent  element  in  consciousness  ;  but  the  persons  concerned 
in  them  were  dead — creatures  of  the  past.  He  himself  had  been 
painfully  re-born,  and  Pimodan's  wife  had  no  present  personal 
existence  for  him.  He  turned  himself  deliberately  to  his  old  life, 
and  took  up  the  interests  of  it  again  one  by  one,  but,  as  he  soon 
discovered,  with  an  insight,  a  power,  a  comprehension  which  had 
never  yet  been  his.  A  moral  and  spiritual  life  destined  to  a  rich 
development  practically  began  for  him  with  this  winter — this 
awful  winter  of  the  agony  of  France. 

His  thoughts  were  often  occupied  now  with  Louie,  but  in  a 
saner  way.  He  could  no  longer,  without  morbidness,  take  on 
himself  the  whole  responsibility  of  her  miserable  marriage. 
Human  beings  after  all  are  what  they  make  themselves.  But  the 
sense  of  his  own  share  in  it,  and  the  perception  of  what  her  future 
life  was  likely  to  be,  made  him  steadily  accept  beforehand  the 
claims  upon  him  which  she  was  sure  to  press. 

He  had  written  to  her  early  in  September,  when  the  siege  was 
imminent,  offering  her  money  to  bring  her  to  England,  and  the 
protection  of  his  roof  during  the  rest  of  the  war.  And  by  a  still 
later  post  than  that  which  brought  the  news  of  Elise's  marriage 
arrived  a  scrawl  from  Louie,  written  from  a  country  town  near 
Toulouse,  whither  she  and  Montjoie  had  retreated — apparently 
the  sculptor's  native  place. 

The  letter  was  full  of  complaints — complaints  of  the  war, 
which  was  being  mismanaged  by  a  set  of  rogues  and  fools  who 
deserved  stringing  to  the  nearest  tree  ;  complaints  of  her  husband, 


CHAP,  xiv  STORM  AND  STRESS  405 

who  was  a  good-for-nothing  brute ;  and  complaints  of  her  own 
health.  She  was  expecting  her  confinement  in  the  spring  ;  if  she 
got  through  it — which  was  not  likely,  considering  the  way  in 
which  she  was  treated — she  should  please  herself  about  staying 
with  such  a  man.  He  should  not  keep  her  for  a  day  if  she  wanted 
to  go.  Meanwhile  David  might  send  her  any  money  he  could 
spare.  There  was  not  much  of  the  six  hundred  left — that  she 
could  tell  him  ;  and  she  could  not  even  screw  enough  for  baby- 
clothes  out  of  her  husband.  Very  likely  there  would  not  be 
enough  to  pay  for  a  nurse  when  her  time  came.  Well,  then  she 
would  be  out  of  it — and  a  good  job  too. 

She  wished  to  be  remembered  to  Dora ;  and  Dora  was 
especially  to  be  told  again  that  she  needn't  suppose  St.  Damian's 
was  a  patch  on  the  real  Catholic  churches,  because  it  wasn't. 
She — Louie — had  been  at  the  Midnight  Mass  in  Toulouse  Cathe- 
dral on  Christmas  Eve.  That  was  something  like.  And  down  in 
the  crypt  they  had  a  '  Bethlehem  ' — the  sweetest  thing  you  ever 
saw.  There  were  the  shepherds,  and  the.  wise  men,  and  the 
angels — dolls,  of  course,  but  their  dresses  were  splendid,  and  the 
little  Jesus  was  dressed  in  white  satin,  embroidered  with  gold — 
old  embroidery,  tell  Dora. 

To  this  David  had  replied  at  once,  sending  money  he  could  ill 
spare,  and  telling  her  to  keep  him  informed  of  her  whereabouts. 

But  the  months  passed  on,  and  no  more  news  arrived.  He 
wrote  again  vid  Bordeaux,  but  with  no  result,  and  could  only 
wait  patiently  till  that  eagle's  grip,  in  which  all  French  life  was 
stifled,  should  be  loosened. 

Meanwhile  his  relation  to  another  human  being,  whose  life  had 
been  affected  by  the  French  episode,  passed  into  a  fresh  phase. 
Two  days  after  the  news  of  Elise's  marriage  had  reached  him,  he 
and  John  had  just  shut  up  the  shop,  and  the  young  master  was 
hanging  over  the  counter  under  the  gas,  heavily  conning  a  not 
very  satisfactory  business  account. 

John  came  in,  took  his  hat  and  stick  from  a  corner,  and  threw 
David  a  gruff  '  good  night.' 

Something  in  the  tone  struck  David's  sore  nerves  like  a  blow. 
He  turned  abruptly — 

'  Look  here,  John  !  I  can't  stand  this  kind  of  thing  much 
longer.  Hadn't  we  better  part  ?  You've  learnt  a  lot  here,  and 
I'll  see  you  get  a  good  place.  You — you  rub  it  in  too  long  ! ' 

John  stood  still,  his  big  rough  hands  beginning  to  shake,  his 
pink  cheeks  turning  a  painful  crimson. 

'  You — you  never  said  a  word  to  me  ! '  he  flung  out  at  last, 
incoherently,  resentfully. 

'  Said  a  word  to  you  ?  What  do  you  mean  ?  I  told  you  the 
truth,  and  I  would  have  told  you  more,  if  you  hadn't  turned 
against  me  as  though  I  had  been  the  devil  himself.  Do  you 
suppose  you  are  the  only  person  who  came  to  grief  because  of 
that  French  time  ?  Good  God ! ' 

The  last  words  came  out  with  a  low  exasperation.     The  young 


406  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

man  leant  against  the  counter,  looking  at  his  assistant  with  bitter, 
indignant  eyes. 

John  first  shrank  from  them,  then  his  own  were  drawn  to 
meet  them.  Even  his  slow  perceptions,  thus  challenged,  realised 
something  of  the  truth.  He  gave  way — as  David  might  have 
made  him  give  way  long  before,  if  his  own  misery  had  not  made 
him  painfully  avoid  any  fresh  shock  of  speech. 

'  Well ! '  said  John,  slowly,  with  a  mighty  effort ;  '  I'll  not  lay 
it  agen  you  ony  more.  I'll  say  that.  But  if  you  want  to  get  rid 
of  me,  you  can.  Only  you'll  be  put  to  't  wi'  t'  printing.' 

The  two  young  fellows  surveyed  each  other.  Then  suddenly 
David  said,  pushing  him  to  the  door  : 

'  You're  a  great  ass,  John — get  out,  and  good  night  to  you.' 

But  next  day  the  atmosphere  was  cleared,  and,  with  inexpres- 
sible relief  on  both  sides,  the  two  fell  back  into  the  old  brotherly 
relation.  Poor  John  !  He  kept  an  old  photograph  of  Louie  in  a 
drawer  at  his  lodging,  and,  when  he  came  home  to  bed,  would 
alternately  weep  over  and  denounce  it.  But,  all  the  same,  his 
interest  in  David's  printing  ventures  was  growing  keener  and 
keener,  and  whenever  business  had  been  particularly  exciting 
during  the  day,  the  performance  with  the  photograph  was  cur- 
tailed or  omitted  at  night.  Let  no  scorn,  however,  be  thought, 
on  that  account,  of  the  true  passion  ! — which  had  thriven  on 
unkindness,  and  did  but  yield  to  the  slow  mastery  of  time. 

The  war  thundered  on.  To  Manchester,  and  to  the  cotton  and 
silk  industries  of  Lancashire  generally,  the  tragedy  of  France 
meant  on  the  whole  a  vast  boom  in  trade.  So  many  French 
rivals  crippled — so  much  ground  set  free  for  English  enterprise  to 
capture — and,  meanwhile,  high  profits  for  a  certain  number  at 
least  of  Manchester  and  Macclesfield  merchants,  and  brisk  wages 
for  the  Lancashire  operatives,  especially  for  the  silk-weavers. 
This,  with  of  course  certain  drawbacks  and  exceptions,  was  the 
aspect  under  which  the  war  mainly  presented  itself  to  Lancashire. 
Meanwhile,  amid  these  teeming  Manchester  streets  with  their 
clattering  lurries  and  overflowing  warehouses,  there  was  at  least 
one  Englishman  who  took  the  war  hardly,  in  whom  the  spectacle 
of  its  wreck  and  struggle  roused  a  feeling  which  was  all  moral, 
human,  disinterested. 

What  was  Regnault  doing  ?  David  kept  a  watch  on  the  news- 
papers, of  which  the  Free  Library  offered  him  an  ample  store ; 
but  there  was  no  mention  of  him  in  the  English  press  that  he 
could  discover,  and  Barbier,  of  course,  got  nothing  now  from 
Paris. 

Christmas  was  over.  The  last  month  of  the  siege,  that  hideous 
January  of  frost  and  fire,  rushed  past,  with  its  alternations  of 
famine  within  and  futile  battle  without — Europe  looking  on 
appalled  at  this  starved  and  shivering  Paris,  into  which  the  shells 
were  raining.  At  last — the  27th  ! — the  capitulation  !  All  was 
over  ;  the  German  was  master  in  Europe,  and  France  lay  at  the 
feet  of  her  conqueror. 


CHAP,  xrv  STORM  AND  STRESS  407 

Out  to  all  parts  streamed  the  letters  which  had  been  so  long 
delayed.  Barbier  and  David,  walking  together  one  bitter  evening 
towards  Barbier's  lodgings,  silent,  with  hanging  heads,  met  the 
postman  on  Barbier's  steps,  who  held  out  a  packet.  The  French- 
man took  it  with  a  cry ;  the  two  rushed  upstairs  and  fell  upon 
the  letters  and  papers  it  contained. 

There — while  Barbier  sat  beside  him,  groaning  over  the  con- 
ditions of  peace,  over  the  enthronement  of  the  Emperor-King  at 
Versailles,  within  sight  of  the  statue  of  Louis  Quatorze,  now 
cursing  '  ces  imbeciles  du  gouvernement ! '  and  now  wiping  the 
tears  from  his  old  cheeks  with  a  trembling  hand — David  read  the 
news  of  the  fight  of  Buzenval,  and  the  death  of  Regnault. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  always  foreseen  it — that  from 
the  very  beginning  Regnault's  image  in  his  thought  had  been 
haloed  with  a  light  of  tragedy  and  storm — a  light  of  death.  His 
eyes  devoured  the  long  memorial  article  in  which  a  friend  of 
Regnault's  had  given  the  details  of  his  last  months  of  life. 
Barbier,  absorbed  in  his  own  grief,  heard  not  a  sound  from  the 
corner  where  his  companion  sat  crouched  beneath  the  gas. 

Everything — the  death  and  the  manner  of  it — was  to  him,  as 
it  were,  in  the  natural  order — fitting,  right,  such  as  might  have 
been  expected.  His  heart  swelled  to  bursting  as  he  read,  but  his 
eyes  were  dry. 

This,  briefly,  was  the  story  which  he  read. 

Henri  Regnault  re-entered  Paris  at  the  beginning  of  Septem- 
ber. By  the  beginning  of  October  he  was  on  active  service, 
stationed  now  at  Asnieres,  now  at  Colombes.  In  October  or 
November  he  became  engaged  to  a  young  girl,  with  whom  he  had 
been  for  long  devotedly  in  love — ah  !  David  thought  of  that 
sudden  smile — the  '  open  door ' !  Their  passion,  cherished  under 
the  wings  of  war,  did  but  give  courage  and  heroism  to  both.  Yet 
he  loved  most  humanly  !  One  night,  in  an  interval  of  duty,  on 
leaving  the  house  where  his  fiancte  lived,  he  found  the  shells  of 
the  bombardment  falling  fast  in  the  street  outside.  He  could 
not  make  up  his  mind  to  go — might  not  ruin  befall  the  dear  house 
with  its  inmates  at  any  moment?  So  he  wandered  up  and  down 
outside  for  hours  in  the  bitter  night,  watching,  amid  the  rattle  of 
the  shells  and  the  terrified  cries  of  women  and  children  from  the 
houses  on  either  side.  At  last,  worn  out  and  frozen  with  cold, 
but  still  unable  to  leave  the  spot,  he  knocked  softly  at  the  door 
he  had  left.  The  concierge  came.  '  Let  me  lie  down  awhile  on 
your  floor.  Tell  no  one.'  Then,  appeased  by  this  regained  near- 
ness to  her,  and  by  the  sense  that  no  danger  could  strike  the  one 
without  warning  the  other,  he  wrapped  himself  in  his  soldier's 
cloak  and  fell  asleep. 

In  November  he  painted  his  last  three  water-colours — visions 
of  the  East,  painted  for  her,  and  as  flower-bright  as  possible, 
'  because  flowers  were  scarce '  in  the  doomed  city. 

December  came.  Regnault  spent  Christmas  night  at  the 
advanced  post  of  Colombes.  His  captain  wished  to  make  him  an 


408  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

officer.  'Thanks,  my  captain,'  said  the  young  fellow  of  twenty- 
three  ;  '  but  if  you  have  a  good  soldier  in  me,  why  exchange  him 
for  an  indifferent  officer?  My  example  will  be  of  more  use  to 
you  than  my  commission.'  Meanwhile  the  days  and  nights  were 
passed  in  Arctic  cold.  Men  were  frozen  to  death  round  about 
him  ;  his  painter's  hand  was  frostbitten.  '  Oh  !  I  can  speak  with 
authority  on  cold ! '  he  wrote  to  his  fiancee ;  '  this  morning  at 
least  I  know  what  it  is  to  spend  the  night  on  the  hard  earth 
exposed  to  a  glacial  wind.  Enough  1  Je  me  rechaufferai  a  votre 
foyer.  I  love  you — I  love  my  country — that  sustains.  Adieu  ! ' 

On  the  17th,  after  a  few  days  in  Paris  spent  with  her  and 
some  old  friends,  he  was  again  ordered  to  the  front.  On  Thurs- 
day the  fight  at  Buzenval  began  with  a  brilliant  success  ;  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  his  fiancee  still  had  news  of  him,  brought  by  a 
servant.  Night  fell.  The  battle  was  hottest  in  a  wood  adjoining 
the  park  of  Buzenval.  Regnault  and  his  painter-comrade  Clairin 
were  side  by  side.  Suddenly  the  retreat  was  sounded,  and  the 
same  instant  Clairin  missed  his  friend.  He  sought  him  with 
frenzy  amid  the  trees  in  the  darkening  wood,  called  to  him, 
peered  into  the  faces  of  the  dying — no  answer  1  Ah  !  he  must 
have  been  swept  backwards  by  the  rush  of  the  retreat — Clairin 
will  find  him  again. 

Three  days  later  the  lost  was  found — one  among  two  hundred 
corpses  of  National  Guards  carted  into  Pere  Lachaise.  Clairin, 
mad  with  grief,  held  his  friend  in  his  arms — held,  kissed  the 
beautiful  head,  now  bruised  and  stained  past  even  her  knowing, 
with  its  bullet- wound  in  the  temple. 

On  his  breast  was  found  a  medal  with  a  silver  tear  hanging 
from  it.  She  who  had  long  worn  it  as  a  symbol  of  bereavement, 
in  memory  of  dear  ones  lost  to  her,  had  given  it  to  him  in  her 
first  joy.  'I  will  reclaim  it,'  she  had  said,  smiling,  'the  first 
time  you  make  me  weep  ! '  It  was  all  that  was  brought  back  to 
her — all  except  a  scrawled  paper  found  in  his  pocket,  containing 
some  hurried  and  almost  illegible  words,  written  perhaps  beside 
his  outpost  fire. 

'  We  have  lost  many  men — we  must  remake  them — better — 
stronger.  The  lesson  should  profit  us.  No  more  lingering  amid 
facile  pleasures  !  Who  dare  now  live  for  himself  alone  ?  It  has 
been  for  too  long  the  custom  with  us  to  believe  in  nothing  but 
enjoyment  and  all  bad  passions.  We  have  prided  ourselves  on  de- 
spising everything  good  and  worthy.  No  more  of  such  contempt  ! ' 

Then — so  the  story  ended — four  days  later,  on  the  very  day  of 
the  capitulation  of  Paris,  Regnault  was  carried  to  his  last  rest. 
A  figure  in  widow's  dress  walked  behind.  And  to  many  standing 
by,  amid  the  muffled  roll  of  the  drums  and  the  wailing  of  the 
music,  it  was  as  though  France  herself  went  down  to  burial  with 
her  son. 

David  got  up  gently  and  went  across  to  Barbier,  who  was  sit- 
ting with  his  letters  and  papers  before  him,  staring  and  stupefied, 
the  lower  jaw  falling,  in  a  trance  of  grief. 


CHAP,  xiv  STORM   AND   STRESS  409 

The  young  man  put  down  the  newspaper  he  had  been  reading 
in  front  of  the  old  man. 

'  Read  that  some  time  ;  it  will  give  you  something  to  be  proud 
of.  I  told  you  I  knew  him — he  was  kind  to  me. ' 

Barbier  nodded,  not  understanding,  and  sought  for  his  spec- 
tacles with  shaking  fingers.  David  quietly  went  out. 

He  walked  home  in  a  state  of  exaltation  like  a  man  still 
environed  with  the  emotion  of  great  poetry  or  great  music.  He 
said  very  little  about  Eegnault  in  the  days  that  followed  to 
Ancrum  or  Barbier,  even  to  Dora,  with  whom  every  week  his 
friendship  was  deepening.  But  the  memory  of  the  dead  man,  as 
it  slowly  shaped  itself  in  his  brooding  mind,  became  with  him  a 
permanent  and  fruitful  element  of  thought.  Very  likely  the 
Kegnault  whom  he  revered,  whose  name  was  henceforth  a  sacred 
thing  to  him,  was  only  part  as  it  were  of  the  real  Eegnault.  He 
saw  the  French  artist  with  an  Englishman's  eyes — interpreted 
him  in  English  ways — the  ways,  moreover,  of  a  consciousness 
self-taught  and  provincial,  however  gifted  and  flexible.  Only 
one  or  two  aspects,  no  doubt,  of  that  rich,  self -tormented  nature, 
reared  amid  the  most  complex  movements  of  European  intelli- 
gence, were  really  plain  to  him.  And  those  aspects  were  specially 
brought  home  to  him  by  his  own  mental  condition.  No  matter. 
Broadly,  essentially,  he  understood. 

But  thenceforward,  just  as  Elise  Delaunay  had  stood  to  him 
in  the  beginning  for  French  art  and  life,  and  that  ferment  in 
himself  which  answered  to  them,  so  now  in  her  place  stood 
Kegnault  with  those  stern  words  upon  his  young  and  dying  lips — 
'  We  have  lost  many  men — we  must  remake  them — better ! 
Henceforward  let  no  one  dare  live  unto  himself.'  The  English- 
man took  them  into  his  heart,  that  ethical  fibre  in  him,  which 
was  at  last  roused  and  dominant,  vibrating,  responding.  And  as 
the  poignant  images  of  death  and  battle  faded  he  saw  his  hero 
always  as  he  had  seen  him  last — young,  radiant,  vigorous,  point- 
ing to  the  dawn  behind  Notre-Dame. 

All  life  looked  differently  to  David  this  winter.  He  saw  the 
Manchester  streets  and  those  who  lived  in  them  with  other  per- 
ceptions. His  old  political  debating  interests,  indeed,  were  com- 
paratively slack  ;  but  persons — men  and  women,  and  their  stories 
— for  these  he  was  instinctively  on  the  watch.  His  eye  noticed 
the  faces  he  passed  as  it  had  never  yet  done — divined  in  them 
suffering,  or  vice,  or  sickness.  All  that  he  saw  at  this  moment 
he  saw  tragically.  The  doors  set  open  about  him  were  still,  as 
Keats,  himself  hurried  to  his  end  by  an  experience  of  passion, 
once  expressed  it,  '  all  dark,'  and  leading  to  darkness.  There  were 
times  when  Dora's  faith  and  Ancrum's  mysticism  drew  him  irre- 
sistibly ;  other  times  when  they  were  almost  as  repu.sive  to  him 
as  they  had  ever  been,  because  they  sounded  to  him  like  the 
formula  of  people  setting  out  to  explain  the  world  '  with  a  light 
heart,'  as  Ollivier  had  gone  to  war. 


410  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

But  whether  or  no  it  could  be  explained,  this  world,  he  could 
not  now  help  putting  out  his  hand  to  meddle  with  and  mend  it ; 
his  mind  fed  on  its  incidents  and  conditions.  The  mill-girls 
standing  on  the  Ancoats  pavements  ;  the  drunken  lurryman 
tottering  out  from  the  public-house  to  his  lurry  under  the  biting 
sleet  of  February ;  the  ragged  barefoot  boys  and  girls  swarming 
and  festering  in  the  slums  ;  the  young  men  struggling  all  about 
him  for  subsistence  and  success — these  for  the  first  time  became 
realities  to  him,  entered  into  that  pondering  of  '  whence  and 
whither '  to  which  he  had  been  always  destined,  and  whereon  he 
was  now  consciously  started. 

And  as  the  months  went  on,  his  attention  was  once  more 
painfully  caught  and  held  by  Dora's  troubles  and  Daddy's 
infirmities.  For  Daddy's  improvement  was  short-lived.  A  bad 
relapse  came  in  November  ;  things  again  went  downhill  fast ;  the 
loan  contracted  in  the  summer  had  to  be  met,  and  under  the 
pressure  of  it  Daddy  only  became  more  helpless  and  disreputable 
week  by  week.  And  now,  when  Doctor  Mildmay  went  to  see  him, 
Daddy,  crouching  over  the  fire,  pretended  to  be  deaf,  and  '  soft ' 
besides.  Nothing  could  be  got  out  of  him  except  certain  grim 
hints  that  his  house  was  his  own  till  he  was  turned  out  of  it. 
'Looks  pretty  bad  this  time,'  said  the  doctor  to  David  once  as  he 
came  out  discomfited.  '  After  all,  there's  not  much  hope  when 
the  craving  returns  on  a  man  of  his  age,  especially  after  some 
years'  interval.' 

Daddy  would  sometimes  talk  frankly  enough  to  David.  At 
such  times  his  language  took  an  exasperating  Shakespearean 
turn.  He  was  abominably  fond  of  posing  as  Lear  or  Jaques — as 
a  man  much  buffeted,  and  acquainted  with  all  the  ugly  secrets 
of  life.  Purcell  stood  generally  for  '  the  enemy  ; '  and  to  Purcell 
his  half-mad  fancy  attributed  most  of  his  misfortunes.  It  was 
Purcell  who  had  undermined  his  business,  taken  away  his  cha- 
racter, and  driven  him  back  to  drink.  David  did  not  believe 
much  of  it,  and  told  him  so.  Then,  roused  to  wrath,  the  young 
man  would  speak  his  mind  plainly  as  to  Dora's  sufferings  and 
Dora's  future.  But  to  very  little  purpose. 

'Aye,  you're  right — you're  right  enough,'  said  the  old  man  to 
him  on  one  of  these  occasions,  with  a  wild,  sinister  look.  '  Cor- 
delia '11  hang  for  't.  If  you  want  to  do  her  any  good,  you  must 
turn  old  Lear  out — send  him  packing,  back  to  the  desert  where 
he  was  before.  There's  elbow-room  there  ! ' 

David  looked  up  startled.  The  thin  bronzed  face  had  a 
restless  flutter  in  it.  Before  he  could  reply  Daddy  had  laid  a 
hand  on  his  shoulder. 

'  Davy,  why  don't  you  drink  ? ' 

'  "What  do  you  mean  ? '  said  the  young  man,  flushing. 

'  Davy,  you've  been  as  close  as  wax ;  but  Daddy  can  see  a 
thing  or  two  when  he  chooses.  Ah,  you  should  drink,  my  lad. 
Let  people  prate — why  shouldn't  a  man  please  himself  ?  It's  not 
the  beastly  liquor — that's  the  worst  part  of  it — it's  the  dreams, 


CHAP,  xiv  STORM  AND   STRESS  411 

my  lad,  "the  dreams  that  come."  They  say  ether  does  the 
business  cheapest.  A  teaspoonful — and  you  can  be  alternately  in 
Paradise  and  the  gutter  four  times  a  day.  But  the  fools  here 
don't  know  how  to  mix  it.' 

As  he  spoke  the  door  opened,  and  there  stood  Dora  on  the 
threshold.  She  had  just  come  back  from  a  Lenten  service  ;  her 
little  worn  prayer-book  was  in  her  hand.  She  stood  trembling, 
looking  at  them  both — at  David's  tight,  indignant  lips — at  her 
father's  excitement. 

Daddy's  eye  fell  on  her  prayer-book,  and  David,  looking  up, 
saw  a  quick  cloud  of  distaste,  aversion,  pass  over  his  weird  face. 

She  put  out  some  supper,  and  pressed  David  to  stay.  He  did 
so  in  the  vain  hope  of  keeping  Daddy  at  home.  But  the  old 
vagrant  was  too  clever  for  both  of  them.  When  David  at  last 
got  up  to  go,  Daddy  accompanied  him  downstairs,  and  stood  in 
the  doorway  looking  up  Market  Place  till  David  had  disappeared 
in  the  darkness.  Then  with  a  soft  and  cunning  hand  he  drew 
the  door  to  behind  him,  and  stood  a  moment  lifting  his  face  to 
the  rack  of  moonlit  cloud  scudding  across  the  top  of  the  houses 
opposite.  As  he  did  so,  he  drew  a  long  breath,  with  the  gesture 
of  one  to  whom  the  wild  airs  of  that  upper  sky,  the  rush  of  its 
driving  wind,  were  stimulus  and  delight.  Then  he  put  down  his 
head  and  stole  off  to  the  right,  towards  the  old  White  Inn  in 
Hanging  Ditch,  while  Dora  was  still  listening  in  misery  for  his 
return  step  upon  the  stairs. 

A  week  later  Dora,  not  knowing  how  the  restaurant  could  be 
kept  going  any  longer,  and  foreseeing  utter  bankruptcy  and  ruin 
as  soon  as  the  shutters  should  be  up,  took  her  courage  in  both 
hands,  swallowed  all  pride,  and  walked  up  to  Half  Street  to  beg 
help  of  Purcell.  After  all  he  was  her  mother's  brother.  In  spite 
of  that  long  feud  between  him  and  Daddy,  he  would  surely,  for 
his  own  credit's  sake,  help  them  to  escape  a  public  scandal.  For 
all  his  rodomontade,  Daddy  had  never  done  him  any  real  harm 
that  she  could  remember. 

So  she  opened  the  shop  door  in  Half  Street,  quaking  at  the 
sound  of  the  bell  she  set  in  motion,  and  went  in. 

Twenty  minutes  afterwards  she  came  out  again,  looking  from 
side  to  side  like  a  hunted  creature,  her  veil  drawn  close  over  her 
face.  She  fled  on  through  Market  Place,  across  Market  Street 
and  St.  Ann's  Square,  and  through  the  tall  dark  warehouse 
streets  beyond — drawn  blindly  towards  Potter  Street  and  her  only 
friend. 

David  was  putting  out  some  books  on  the  stall  when  he  looked 
up  and  saw  her.  Perceiving  that  she  was  weeping  and  breathless, 
he  asked  her  into  the  back  room,  while  John  kept  guard  in  the 
shop. 

There  she  leant  against  the  mantelpiece,  shaking  from  head 
to  foot,  and  wiping  away  her  tears.  He  soon  gathered  that  she 
had  been  to  Purcell,  and  that  Purcell  had  dismissed  her  appeal 


412  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

with  every  circumstance  of  cold  and  brutal  insult.  The  sooner 
her  father  was  in  the  workhouse  or  the  lunatic  asylum,  and  she 
in  some  nunnery  or  other,  the  sooner  each  would  be  in  their  right 
place.  He  was  a  vagabond,  and  she  a  Papist — let  them  go  where 
they  belonged.  He  was  not  going  to  spend  a  farthing  of  his  hard- 
earned  money  to  help  either  of  them  to  impose  any  further  on  the 
world.  And  then  he  let  fall  a  word  or  two  which  showed  her  that 
he  had  probably  been  at  the  bottom  of  some  merciless  pressure 
lately  applied  to  them  by  one  or  two  of  their  chief  creditors.  The 
bookseller's  hour  was  come,  and  he  was  looking  on  at  the  hewing 
of  his  Agag  with  the  joy  of  the  righteous.  So  might  the  Lord 
avenge  him  of  all  his  enemies. 

Dora  could  hardly  give  an  account  of  it.  The  naked  revelation 
of  Purcell's  hate,  of  so  hard  and  vindictive  a  soul,  had  worked 
upon  her  like  some  physical  horror.  She  had  often  suspected  the 
truth,  but  now  that  it  was  past  doubting,  the  moral  shock  was 
terrible  to  this  tender  mystical  creature,  whose  heart  by  day  and 
night  lived  a  hidden  life  with  the  Crucified  and  with  His  saints. 
Oh,  how  could  he,  how  could  anyone,  be  so  cruel  ? — her  father 
getting  an  old  man !  and  she,  who  had  never  quarrelled  with  him 
— who  had  nursed  Lucy !  So  she  wailed,  gradually  recovering 
her  poor  shaken  soul — calming  it,  indeed,  all  the  while  out  of 
sight,  with  quick  piteous  words  of  prayer  and  submission. 

David  stood  by,  pale  with  rage  and  sympathy.  But  what 
could  he  do  ?  He  was  himself  in  the  midst  of  a  hard  struggle, 
and  had  neither  money  nor  credit  available.  They  parted  at  last, 
with  the  understanding  that  he  was  to  go  and  consult  Ancrum, 
and  that  she  was  to  go  to  her  friends  at  St.  Damian's. 

Till  now  poor  Dora  had  carefully  refrained  from  bringing  her 
private  woes  into  relation  with  her  life  in  and  through  St. 
Damian's.  Within  that  enchanted  circle,  she  was  another  being 
with  another  existence.  There  she  had  never  asked  anything  for 
herself,  except  the  pardon  and  help  of  God,  before  His  altar,  and 
through  His  priests.  Rather  she  had  given — given  all  that  she 
had — her  time,  such  as  she  could  spare  from  Daddy  and  her  work, 
to  the  Sunday-school  and  the  sick  ;  her  hard-won  savings  on  her 
clothes,  and  on  the  extra  work,  for  which  she  would  often  sit  up 
night  after  night  when  Daddy  believed  her  asleep,  to  the  poor 
and  to  the  services  of  the  Church.  There  she  had  a  position, 
almost  an  authority  of  her  own — the  authority  which  comes  of 
self -spending.  But  now  this  innocent  pride  must  be  humbled. 
For  the  sake  of  her  father,  and  of  those  to  whom  they  owed 
money  they  could  not  pay,  she  must  go  and  ask — beg  instead  of 
giving.  All  she  wanted  was  time.  Her  embroidery  work  was 
now  better  paid  than  ever.  If  the  restaurant  were  closed  she 
could  do  more  of  it.  In  the  end  she  believed  she  could  pay  every- 
body. But  she  must  have  time.  Yes,  she  would  go  to  Father 
Vernon  that  night  1  He  would  understand,  even  if  he  could  not 
help  her. 

Alas  !    Next  morning  David  was  just  going  out  to  dinner, 


CHA?.  xiv  STORM   AND   STRESS  413 

when  a  message  was  brought  him  from  Market  Place.  .  He  started 
off  thither  at  a  run,  and  found  a  white  and  gasping  Dora  wander- 
ing restlessly  up  and  down  the  upper  room  ;  while  Sarah,  the  old 
Lancashire  cook,  very  red  and  very  tearful,  followed  her  about 
trying  to  administer  consolation.  Daddy  had  disappeared.  After 
coming  in  about  eleven  the  night  before  and  going  noisily  to 
his  room — no  doubt  for  the  purpose  of  deluding  Dora — be  must 
have  stolen  down  again  and  made  off  without  being  either  seen  or 
heard  by  anybody.  Even  the  policeman  on  duty  in  Market  Place 
had  noticed  nothing.  He  had  taken  what  was  practically  the  only 
money  left  them  in  the  world — about  twenty  pounds — from  Dora's 
cashbox,  and  some  clothes,  packing  these  last  in  a  knapsack 
which  still  remained  to  him  from  the  foreign  tramps  of  years 
before. 

The  efforts  made  by  Dora,  David,  and  Ancrum,  whom  David 
called  in  to  help,  to  track  the  fugitive,  were  quite  useless.  Daddy 
had  probably  disguised  himself,  for  he  had  all  the  tricks  of  the 
adventurer,  and  could  '  make  up '  in  former  days  so  as  to  deceive 
even  his  own  wife. 

Strange  outbreak  of  a  secret  ineradicable  instinct !  He  had 
been  Dora's  for  twenty  years.  But  life  with  her  at  Leicester,  and 
during  their  first  years  at  Manchester,  had  thriven  too  evenly, 
and  in  the  end  the  old  wanderer  had  felt  his  blood  prick  within 
him,  and  the  mania  of  his  youth  revive.  His  business  had  grown 
hateful  to  him  ;  it  was  probably  the  comparative  monotony  of 
success  which  had  first  reawakened  the  travel-hunger — then  rest- 
lessness, conflict,  leading  to  drink,  and,  finally,  escape. 

'  He  will  come  back,  you  know,'  said  Dora  one  night,  sharply, 
to  David.  '  He  served  my  mother  so  many  times.  But  he  always 
came  back.' 

They  were  sitting  together  in  the  shuttered  and  dismantled 
restaurant.  There  was  to  be  a  sale  on  the  premise's  on  the 
morrow,  and  the  lower  room  had  that  day  been  filled  with  all  the 
'  plant '  of  the  restaurant,  and  all  or  almost  all  the  poor  house- 
hold stuff  from  upstairs.  It  was  an  odd,  ramshackle  collection  ; 
and  poor  Dora,  who  had  been  walking  round  looking  at  the 
auction  tickets,  was  realising  with  a  sinking  heart  how  much  debt 
the  sale  would  still  leave  unprovided  for.  But  she  had  found 
friends.  Father  Vernon  had  met  the  creditors  for  her.  There 
had  been  a  composition,  and  she  had  insisted  upon  working  off  to 
the  best  of  her  power  whatever  sum  might  remain  after  the 
possession  and  goodwill  had  been  sold.  She  could  live  on  a  crust, 
and  she  was  sure  of  continuous  work  both  for  the  great  church- 
furniture  shop  in  Manchester  which  had  hitherto  employed  her 
and  also  for  the  newly  established  School  of  Art  Needlework  at 
Kensington.  As  an  embroideress  there  were  few  more  delicately 
trained  eyes  and  defter  hands  than  hers  in  England. 

When  she  spoke  of  her  father's  coming  back,  David  was  seized 
with  pity.  She  could  not  sit  down  in  these  days  when  her  work 
was  out  of  her  hands.  Perpetual  movement  seemed  her  only 


414  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

relief.  The  face,  that  seemed  so  featureless  but  was  so  expressive, 
had  lost  its  sweet,  shining  look  ;  the  mouth  had  the  pucker  of 
pain  ;  and  she  had  piteous  startled  ways  quite  unlike  her  usual 
soft  serenity. 

'  Oh,  yes,  he  will  come  back— some  time,'  he  said,  to  comfort 
her. 

'  I  don't  doubt  that — never.  But  I  wonder  how  he  could  go 
like  that — how  he  had  the  heart !  I  did  think  he  cared  for  me. 
I  wasn't  ever  nasty  to  him — at  least,  I  don't  remember.  Perhaps 
he  thought  I  was.  But  only  we  two — and  always  together — since 
mother  died ! ' 

She  began  to  tidy  some  of  the  lots,  to  tie  some  of  the  bundles 
of  odds  and  ends  together  more  securely — talking  all  the  while  in 
a  broken  way.  She  was  evidently  bewildered  and  at  sea.  If  she 
could  have  remembered  any  misconduct  of  her  own,  it  seemed  to 
David,  it  would  have  been  a  relief  to  her.  Her  faith  taught  her 
that  love  was  all-powerful — but  it  had  availed  her  nothing  ! 

The  sale  came  ;  and  the  goodwill  of  the  Parlour  was  sold  to  a 
man  who  was  to  make  a  solid  success  of  what  with  Daddy  had 
been  a  half -crazy  experiment. 

Dora  went  to  live  in  Ancoats,  that  teeming,  squalid  quarter 
which  lies  but  a  stone's-throw  from  the  principal  thoroughfares 
and  buildings  of  Manchester,  and  in  its  varieties  of  manufacturing 
life  and  population  presents  types  which  are  all  its  own.  Here 
are  the  cotton  operatives  who  work  the  small  proportion  of  mills 
still  remaining  within  the  bounds  of  Manchester — the  spinners, 
minders,  reelers,  reed-makers,  and  the  rest ;  here  are  the  calico- 
printers  and  dyers,  the  warehousemen  and  lurryrnen ;  and  here 
too  are  the  sellers  of  '  fents,'  and  all  the  other  thousand  and  one 
small  trades  and  occupations  which  live  on  and  by  the  poor.  The 
quarter  has  one  broad  thoroughfare  or  lung,  which  on  a  sunny 
day  is  gay,  sightly,  and  alive  ;  then  to  north  and  south  diverge 
the  innumerable  low  red-brick  streets  where  the  poor  live  and 
work ;  which  have  none,  however,  of  the  trim  uniformity  which 
belongs  to  the  workers'  quarters  of  the  factory  towns  pure  and 
simple.  Manchester  in  its  worst  streets  is  more  squalid,  more 
haphazard,  more  nakedly  poor  even  than  London.  Yet,  for  all 
that,  Manchester  is  a  city  with  a  common  life,  which  London  is 
not.  The  native  Lancashire  element,  lost  as  it  is  beneath  many 
supervening  strata,  is  still  there  and  powerful  ;  and  there  are 
strong  well-defined  characteristic  interests  and  occupations  which 
bind  the  whole  together. 

Here  Dora  settled  with  a  St.  Damian's  girl  friend,  a  shirt- 
maker.  They  lived  over  a  sweetshop,  in  two  tiny  rooms,  in  a 
street  even  more  miscellaneous  and  half-baked  than  its  neigh- 
bours. Outside  was  ugliness  ;  inside,  unremitting  labour.  But 
Dora  soon  made  herself  almost  happy.  By  various  tender  shifts 
she  had  saved  out  of  the  wreck  in  Market  Place  Daddy's  bits  of 
engravings  and  foreign  curiosities,  his  Swiss  carvings  and  shells, 
his  skins  and  stuffed  birds  ;  very  moth-eaten  and  melancholy 


CHAP,  xiv  STORM  AND   STRESS  415 

these  last,  but  still  safe.  There,  too,  was  his  chair  ;  it  stood 
beside  the  fire ;  he  had  but  to  come  back  to  it.  Many  a  time  in 
the  week  did  she  suddenly  rise  that  she  might  go  to  the  door  and 
listen  ;  or  crane  her  head  out  of  window,  agitated  by  a  figure,  a 
sound,  as  her  mother  had  done  before  her. 

Then  her  religious  life  was  free  to  expand  as  it  had  never  been 
yet.  Very  soon,  in  Passion  Week,  she  and  her  friend  had  gathered 
a  prayer-meeting  of  girls,  hands  from  the  mill  at  the  end  of  the 
street.  They  came  for  twenty  minutes  in  the  dinner-hour,  delicate- 
faced  comely  creatures  many  of  them,  with  their  shawls  over  their 
heads  :  Dora  prayed  and  sang  with  them,  a  soft  tremulous  passion 
in  every  word  and  gesture.  They  thought  her  a  saint — began  to 
tell  her  their  woes  and  their  sins.  In  the  evenings  and  on  Sunday 
she  lived  in  the  coloured  and  scented  church,  with  its  plaintive 
music,  its  luminous  altar,  its  suggestions  both  of  a  great  encom- 
passing church  order  of  undefined  antiquity  and  infinite  future, 
and  of  a  practical  system  full  of  support  for  individual  weakness 
and  guidance  for  the  individual  will.  The  beauty  of  the  cere- 
monial appealed  to  those  instincts  in  her  which  found  other 
expression  in  her  glowing  embroideries  ;  and  towards  the  church 
order,  with  its  symbols,  observances,  mysteries,  the  now  solitary 
girl  felt  a  more  passionate  adoration,  a  more  profound  humility, 
than  ever  before.  Nothing  too  much  could  be  asked  of  her. 
During  Lent,  but  for  the  counsels  of  Father  Eussell  himself,  a 
shrewd  man,  well  aware  that  St.  Damian's  represented  the  one 
Anglican  oasis  in  an  incorrigibly  moderate  Manchester,  even  her 
serviceable  and  elastic  strength  would  have  given  way,  so  hard 
she  was  to  that  poor  'sister  the  body,'  which  so  many  patient 
ages  have  gone  to  perfect  and  adjust. 

Half  of  the  romance,  the  poetry  of  her  life,  lay  here  ;  the  other 
half  in  her  constant  expectation  of  her  father,  and  in  the  visits  of 
David  Grieve.  Once  a  week  at  least  David  mounted  to  the  little 
room  where  the  two  girls  sat  working  ;  sometimes  now,  oh  joy  ! 
he  went  to  church  with  her ;  sometimes  he  made  her  come  out 
to  Eccles,  or  Cheadle,  or  the  Irwell  valley  for  a  walk.  She  used 
various  maidenly  arts  and  self-restraints  to  prevent  scandal.  At 
home  she  never  saw  him  alone,  and  she  now  never  went  to  Potter 
Street.  Still,  out  of  doors  they  were  often  alone.  There  was  no 
concealment,  and  the  persons  who  took  notice  assumed  that  they 
were  keeping  company  and  going  to  be  married.  When  such 
things  were  said  to  Dora  she  met  them  with  a  sweet  and  quiet 
denial,  at  first  blushing,  then  with  no  change  at  all  of  look  or 
manner. 

Yet  the  girl  who  lived  with  her  knew  that  the  first  sound  of 
David's  rap  on  the  door  below  sent  a  tremor  through  the  figure 
beside  her,  that  the  slight  hand  would  go  up  instinctively  to  the 
coiled  hair,  straightening  and  pinning,  and  that  the  smiling, 
listening,  sometimes  disputing  Dora  who  talked  with  David 
Grieve  was  quite  different  from  the  dreamy  and  ascetic  Dora 
who  sat  beside  her  all  day. 


416  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  HI 

Why  did  David  go  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  with  every  month 
of  this  winter  and  spring,  Dora's  friendship  became  more  neces- 
sary to  him.  All  the  brotherly  feeling  he  would  once  so  willingly 
have  spent  on  Louie,  he  now  spent  on  Dora.  She  became  in 
truth  a  sister  to  him.  He  talked  to  her  as  he  would  have  done 
to  Louie  had  she  been  like  Dora.  No  other  relationship  ever 
entered  his  mind  ;  and  he  believed  that  he  was  perfectly  under- 
stood and  met  in  the  same  way. 

Both  often  spoke  of  Lucy,  towards  whom  David  in  this  new 
and  graver  temper  felt  both  kindly  and  gratefully.  She,  poor 
child,  wrote  to  Dora  from  time  to  time  letters  full  of  complaints 
of  her  father  and  of  his  tyranny  in  keeping  her  away  from 
Manchester.  He  indeed  seemed  to  have  taken  a  morbid  dislike 
to  his  daughter,  and  what  company  he  wanted  he  got  from  the 
widow,  whom  yet  he  had  never  made  up  his  mind  to  marry. 
Lucy  chafed  and  rebelled  against  the  perpetual  obstacles  he 
placed  in  the  way  of  her  returning  home,  but  he  threatened  to 
make  her  earn  her  own  living  if  she  disobeyed  him,  and  in  the 
end  she  always  submitted.  She  poured  herself  out  bitterly,  how- 
ever, to  Dora,  and  Dora  was  helplessly  sorry  for  her,  feeling  that 
her  idle  wandering  life  with  the  various  aunts  and  cousins  she 
boarded  with  was  excessively  bad  for  her — seeing  that  Lucy  was 
not  of  the  stuff  to  fashion  new  duties  or  charities  for  herself  out 
of  new  relations — and  that  the  small,  vain,  and  yet  affectionate 
nature  ran  an  evil  chance  of  ultimate  barrenness  and  sourness. 

But  what  could  she  do  ?  In  every  letter  there  was  some  men- 
tion of  David  Grieve  or  request  for  news  about  him.  About  the 
visit  to  Paris  Dora  had  written  discreetly,  telling  only  what  she 
knew,  and  nothing  of  what  she  guessed.  In  reality,  as  the 
winter  passed  on,  Dora  watched  him  more  and  more  closely, 
waiting  for  the  time  when  that  French  mystery,  whatever  it  was, 
should  have  ceased  to  overshadow  him,  and  she  might  once  more 
scheme  for  Lucy.  He  must  marry — that  she  knew  ! — whatever 
he  might  think.  Anyone  could  see  that,  with  the  returning 
spring,  in  spite  of  her  friendship  and  Ancrum's,  he  felt  his  loneli- 
ness almost  intolerable.  It  was  clear,  too,  as  his  manhood 
advanced,  that  he  was  naturally  drawn,  to  women,  naturally 
dependent  on  them.  In  spite  of  his  great  intelligence,  to  her  so 
formidable  and  mysterious,  Dora  had  soon  recognised,  as  Elise 
had  done,  the  eager,  clinging,  confiding  temper  of  his  youth. 
And  beneath  the  transformation  of  passion  and  grief  it  was  still 
there — to  be  felt  moving  often  like  a  wounded  thing. 

CHAPTER  XV 

IT  was  a  showery  April  evening.  But  as  it  was  also  a  Saturday, 
Manchester  took  no  heed  at  all  of  the  weather.  The  streets  were 
thronged.  All  the  markets  were  ablaze  with  light,  and  full  of 
buyers.  In  Market  Place,  Dora's  old  home,  the  covered  glass 
booths  beside  the  pavement  brought  the  magic  of  the  spring  into 


CHAP,  xv  STORM  AND  STRESS  417 

the  very  heart  of  the  black  and  swarming  town,  for  they  were  a 
fragrant  show  of  daffodils,  hyacinths,  primroses,  and  palms. 
Their  lights  shone  out  into  the  rainy  mist  of  the  air,  on  the 
glistening  pavements,  and  on  the  faces  of  the  cheerful  chattering 
crowd,  to  which  the  shawled  heads  so  common  among  the  women 
gave  the  characteristic  Lancashire  touch.  Above  rose  the  dark 
tower  of  the  Exchange  ;  on  one  side  was  the  Parlour,  still  dedi- 
cated to  the  kindly  diet  of  corn-  and  fruit-eating  men,  but 
repainted,  and  launched  on  a  fresh  career  of  success  by  Daddy's 
successor  ;  on  the  other,  the  gabled  and  bulging  mass  of  the  old 
Fishing-tackle  House,  with  a  lively  fish  and  oyster  traffic  surging 
in  the  little  alleys  on  either  side  of  it. 

Market  Street,  too,  was  thronged.  In  the  great  cheap  shop  at 
the  head  of  it,  aflame  with  lights  from  top  to  base,  you  could  see 
the  buyers  story  after  story,  swarming  like  bees  in  a  glass  hive. 
Farther  on  in  the  wide  space  of  the  Infirmary  square,  the  omni- 
buses gathered,  and  a  detachment  of  redcoats  just  returned  from 
rifle-practice  on  the  moors  crowded  the  pavement  outside  the 
hospital,  amid  an  admiring  escort  of  the  youth  of  Manchester, 
while  their  band  played  lustily. 

But  especially  in  Peter  Street,  the  street  of  the  great  public 
halls  and  principal  theatres,  was  Manchester  alive  and  busy. 
Mlsson  was  singing  at  the  '  Royal,'  and  the  rich  folk  were  setting 
down  there  in  their  broughams  and  landaus.  But  in  the  great 
Free  Trade  Hall  there  was  a  performance  of  '  Judas  Maccabeus ' 
given  by  the  Manchester  Philharmonic  Society,  and  the  vast 
place,  filled  from  end  to  end  with  shilling  and  two-shilling  seats, 
was  crowded  with  the  'people.'  It  was  a  purely  local  scene, 
unlike  anything  of  the  same  kind  in  London,  or  any  other  capital. 
The  performers  on  the  platform  were  well  known  to  Manchester, 
unknown  elsewhere  ;  Manchester  took  them  at  once  critically  and 
affectionately,  remembering  their  past,  looking  forward  to  their 
future  ;  the  Society  was  one  of  which  the  town  was  proud  ;  the 
conductor  was  a  character,  and  popular ;  and  half  the  audience 
at  least  was  composed  of  the  relations  and  friends  of  the  chorus. 
Most  people  had  a  'Susan,'  an  'Alice,'  or  a  'William'  making 
signs  to  them  at  intervals  from  the  orchestra  ;  and  when  any- 
thing went  particularly  well,  and  the  applause  was  loud,  the 
friends  of  Susan  or  Alice  beamed  with  a  proprietary  pride. 

Looking  down  upon  this  friendly  cheerful  throng  sat  David 
Grieve,  high  up  in  the  balcony.  It  had  been  his  wont  of  late  to 
frequent  these  cheap  concerts,  where  as  a  rule,  owing  to  the 
greater  musical  sensitiveness  of  the  English  North  as  compared 
with  the  South,  the  music  is  singularly  good.  During  the  past 
winter,  indeed,  music  might  almost  be  said  to  have  become  part 
of  his  life.  He  had  no  true  musical  gift,  >ut  in  the  paralysis  of 
many  of  his  natural  modes  of  expression  which  had  overtaken 
him  music  supplied  a  need.  In  it  he  at  least,  and  at  this  moment, 
found  a  voice  and  an  emotion  not  too  personal  or  poignant.  He 
lost  himself  in  it,  and  was  soothed. 


418  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

Towards  the  beginning  of  the  last  part  he  suddenly  with  a 
start  recognised  Lucy  Purcell  in  the  body  of  the  hall.  She  was 
sitting  with  friends  whom  he  did  not  know,  staring  straight 
before  her.  He  bent  forward  and  looked  at  her  carefully.  In  a 
minute  or  two  he  decided  that  she  was  looking  tired,  cross,  and 
unhappy,  and  that  she  was  not  attending  to  the  music  at  all. 

So  at  last  her  father  had  let  her  come  home.  As  to  her  looks, 
to  be  daughter  to  Purcell  was  to  be  sure  of  disagreeable  living  ; 
and  perhaps  her  future  stepmother  had  been  helping  Purcell  to 
annoy  her. 

Poor  little  thing !  David  felt  a  strong  wish  to  speak  to  her 
after  the  performance.  Meanwhile  he  tried  to  attract  her  atten- 
tion, but  in  vain.  It  seemed  to  him  that  she  looked  right  along 
the  bench  on  which  he  sat ;  but  there  was  no  flash  in  her  face  ;  it 
remained  as  tired  and  frowning  as  before. 

He  ran  downstairs  before  the  end  of  the  last  chorus,  and 
placed  himself  near  the  door  by  which  he  felt  sure  she  would 
come  out.  He  was  just  in  time.  She  and  her  party  also  came 
out  early  before  the  rush.  There  was  a  sudden  crowd  of  people 
in  the  doorway,  and  then  he  heard  a  little  cry.  Lucy  stood 
before  him,  flushed,  pulling  at  her  glove,  and  saying  something 
incoherent.  But  before  he  could  understand  she  had  turned  back 
to  the  two  women  who  accompanied  her  and  spoken  to  them 
quickly ;  the  elder  replied,  with  a  sour  look  at  David  ;  the 
younger  laughed  behind  her  muff.  Lucy  turned  away  wilfully, 
and  at  that  instant  the  crowd  from  within,  surging  outwards, 
swept  them  away  from  her,  and  she  and  David  found  themselves 
together. 

'  Come  down  those  steps  there  to  the  right,'  she  said  peremp- 
torily. '  They  are  going  the  other  way. ' 

By  this  time  David  himself  was  red.  She  hurried  him  into 
the  street,  however,  and  then  he  saw  that  she  was  breathing  hard, 
and  that  her  hands  were  clasped  together  as  though  she  were 
trying  to  restrain  herself. 

'  Oh,  I  am  so  unhappy  ! '  she  burst  out,  '  so  unhappy  !  And  it 
was  all,  you  know,  to  begin  with,  because  of  you,  Mr.  Grieve ! 
But  oh  !  I  forgot  you'd  been  ill — you  look  so  different ! ' 

She  paused  suddenly,  while  over  her  face  there  passed  an 
expression  half  startled,  half  shrinking,  as  of  one  who  speaks 
familiarly,  as  he  supposes,  to  an  old  friend  and  finds  a  stranger. 
She  could  not  take  her  eyes  off  him.  What  was  this  new  dignity, 
this  indefinable  change  of  manner  ? 

'I  am  not  different,'  he  said  hastily,  'not  in  the  least.  So 
your  father  has  never  forgiven  you  the  kindness  you  did  me  ?  I 
don't  know  what  to  say,  Miss  Lucy.  I'm  both  sorry  and  ashamed.' 

'  Forgiven  it ! — no,  nor  ever  will,'  she  said  shortly,  walking  on, 
and  forgetting  everything  but  her  woes.  'Oh,  do  listen  !  Come 
up  Oxford  Street.  I  must  tell  some  one,  or  I  shall  die  !  I  must 
see  Dora.  Father's  forbidden  me  to  go,  and  I  haven't  had  a 
moment  to  myself  yet.  She  hasn't  written  to  me  since  she  left 


CHAP,  xv  STORM   AND   STRESS  419 

the  Parlour,  and  no  one  '11  tell  me  where  she  is.  And  that  odious 
woman  !  Oh,  she  is  an  abominable  wretch  !  She  wants  to  claim 
all  my  things— all  the  bits  of  things  that  were  mother's,  and  I 
have  always  counted  mine.  She  won't  let  me  take  any  of  them 
away.  And  she's  stolen  a  necklace  of  mine — yes,  Mr.  Grieve, 
stolen  it.  I  don't  care  that  about  it — not  in  itself ;  but  to  have 
your  things  taken  out  of  your  drawers  without  "  With  your 
leave  "  or  "  By  your  leave "  ! —  She's  made  father  worse  than 
ever.  I  thought  he  had  found  her  out,  but  he  is  actually  going 
to  marry  her  in  July,  and  they  won't  let  me  live  at  home  unless 
I  make  a  solemn  promise  to  "  perform  my  religious  duties  "  and 
behave  properly  to  the  chapel  people.  And  I  never  will,  not  if 
I  starve  for  it — nasty,  canting,  crawling,  backbiting  things  !  Then 
father  says  I  can  live  away,  and  he'll  make  me  an  allowance. 
And  what  do  you  think  he'll  allow  me  ? ' 

She  faced  round  upon  him  with  curving  lip  and  eyes  aflame. 
David  averred  truly  that  he  could  not  guess. 

'  Thirty — pounds — a — year  ! '  she  said  with  vicious  emphasis. 
'  There — would  you  believe  it  ?  If  you  put  a  dirty  little  chit  of  a 
nurse-girl  on  board  wages,  it  would  come  to  more  than  that. 
And  he  just  bought  three  houses  in  Millgate,  and  as  rich  as  any- 
thing !  Oh,  it's  shameful,  I  call  it,  shameful !  ' 

She  put  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes.  Then  she  quickly 
withdrew  it  again  and  turned  to  him,  remembering  how  his  first 
aspect  had  surprised  her.  In  the  glare  of  some  shops  they  were 
passing  David  could  see  her  perfectly,  and  she  him.  Certainly, 
in  the  year  which  had  elapsed  since  they  had  met  she  had  ripened, 
or  rather  softened,  into  a  prettier  girl.  Whether  it  was  the 
milder  Southern  climate  in  which  she  had  been  living,  or  the 
result  of  physical  weakness  left  by  her  attack  of  illness  in  the 
preceding  spring,  at  any  rate  her  bloom  was  more  delicate,  the 
lines  of  her  small,  pronounced  face  more  finished  and  melting. 
As  for  her,  now  that  she  had  paused  a  moment  in  her  flow  of 
complaint,  she  was  busy  puzzling  out  the  change  in  him.  David 
became  vaguely  conscious  of  it,  and  tried  to  set  her  off  again. 

'  But  you'd  rather  live  away,'  he  said,  'when  they  treat  you 
like  that  ?  You'd  rather  be  independent,  I  should  think  ?  I 
would  ! ' 

'  Oh,  catch  me  living  with  that  woman  ! '  she  cried  passion- 
ately. '  She's  no  better  than  a  thief,  a  common  thief.  I  don't 
care  who  hears  me.  And  made  up  !  Oh,  its  shocking  !  It 
seems  to  me  there's  nothing  I  can  talk  about  at  home  now — 
whether  it's  getting  old— or  teeth — or  hair — I'm  always  supposed 
to  be  "  passing  remarks."  And  I  wouldn't  mind  if  it  was  my 
Hastings  cousins  I  had  to  live  with.  But  they  can't  have  me  any 
more,  and  now  I'm  at  Wakely  with  the  Astons. ' 

'  The  Aston's  ? '  David  echoed.  Like  most  people  of  small 
training  and  intelligence,  Lucy  instinctively  supposed  that  what- 
ever was  familiar  to  her  was  familiar  to  other  people. 

'  Oh,  don't  you  know  ?  It's  father's  sister  who  married  a  mill- 


430  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

overseer  at  Wakely.  And  they're  very  kind  to  me.  Only  they're 
dreadfully  pious  too — not  like  father — I  don't  mean  that.  And, 
you  see — it's  Robert ! ' 

4  "Who's  Robert  ? '  asked  David  amused  by  her  blush,  and 
admiring  the  trim  lightness  of  her  figure  and  walk. 

4  Robert's  the  eldest  son.  He's  a  reedmaker.  He's  got  enough 
to  marry  on — at  least  he  thinks  so.' 

4  And  he  wants  to  marry  you  ? ' 

She  nodded.  Then  she  looked  at  him,  laughing,  her  natu- 
rally bright  eyes  sparkling  through  the  tears  still  wet  in  them. 

4  Father's  a  Baptist,  you  know — that's  bad  enough — but 
Robert's  a  Particular  Baptist.  I  asked  him  what  it  meant  once 
when  he  was  pestering  me  to  marry  him.  "  Well,  you  see,"  he 
said,  "  a  man  must  show  that  his  heart's  changed — we  don't  take 
in  everybody  like — we  want  to  be  sure  they're  real  converted."  I 
don't  believe  it  does  mean  that — father  says  it  doesn't.  Anyway 
I  asked  him  whether  if  I  married  him  he'd  want  me  to  be  a  Parti- 
cular Baptist  too.  And  he  said,  very  slow  and  solemn,  that  of 
course  he  should  look  for  religious  fellowship  in  his  wife,  but  that 
he  didn't  want  to  hurry  me.  I  laughed  till  I  cried  at  the  thought 
of  me  going  to  that  hideous  chapel  of  his,  dressed  like  his  married 
sister.  But  sometimes,  I  declare,  I  think  he'll  make  me  do  what 
he  wants — he's  got  a  way  with  him.  He  sticks  to  a  thing  as 
tight  as  wax,  and  I  don't  care  what  becomes  of  me  sometimes. ' 

She  pouted  despondently,  but  her  quick  eye  stole  to  her  com- 
panion's face. 

'Oh,  no,  you  won't  marry  Robert,  Miss  Lucy,'  said  David 
cheerfully.  '  You've  had  a  will  of  your  own  ever  since  I've 
known  you.  But  what  are  you  at  home  for  now  ? ' 

'  Why,  I  told  you — to  pack  up  my  things.  But  I  .can't  find 
half  of  them  ;  she — she's  walked  off  with  them.  Oh,  I'm  going  off 
again  as  soon  as  possible — I  can't  stand  it.  But  I  must  see  Dora. 
Father  says  I  shan't  visit  Papists.  But  I'll  watch  my  chance.  I'll 
get  there  to-morrow — see  if  I  don't !  Tell  me  what  she's  doing, 
Mr.  Grieve.' 

David  told  her  all  he  knew.  Lucy's  comments  were  very  cha- 
racteristic. She  was  equally  hard  on  Daddy's  ill-behaviour  and 
Dora's  religion,  with  a  little  self-satisfied  hardness  that  would  have 
provoked  David  but  for  its  childish  naivete.  Many  of  the  things 
that  she  said  of  Dora,  however,  showed  real  feeling,  real  affection. 

4  She  is  good,'  she  wound  up  at  last  with  a  long  sigh. 

'  Yes,  she's  the  best  woman  I  ever  saw,'  said  David  slowly  ; 
4 she's  beautiful,  she's  a  saint.' 

Lucy  looked  up  quickly — her  dismayed  eyes  fastened  on  him 
— then  they  fell  again,  and  her  expression  became  suddenly 
piteous  and  humble. 

'  You're  still  getting  on  well,  aren't  you  ? '  she  said  timidly. 
4  You  were  glad  not  to  be  turned  out,  weren't  you  ? ' 

Somehow,  for  the  life  of  her,  she  could  not  at  that  moment 
help  reminding  him  of  her  claim  upon  him.  He  admitted  it  very 


CHAP.  XT  STORM  AND   STRESS  421 

readily,  told  her  broadly  how  he  was  doing  and  what  new  connec- 
tions he  was  making.  It  was  pleasant  to  tell  her,  pleasant  to 
speak  to  this  changing  rose-leaf  face  with  its  eager  curiosity  and 
attention. 

'  And  you  were  ill  when  you  were  abroad  ?— so  Dora  said. 
Father,  of  course,  made  unkind  remarks — you  may  be  sure  of 
that ! — he'll  set  stories  about  when  he  doesn't  like  anybody.  I 
didn't  believe  a  word.' 

'  It  don't  matter,'  said  David  hotly,  but  he  flushed.  His 
desire  to  wring  Purccll's  neck  was  getting  inconveniently  strong. 

'  No,  not  a  bit,'  she  declared.  Then  she  suddenly  broke  into 
laughter.  '  Oh,  Mr.  Grieve,  how  many  assistants  do  you  think 
father's  had  since  you  left  ? ' 

And  she  chatted  on  about  these  individuals,  describing  a 
series  of  dolts,  their  achievements  and  personalities,  with  a  great 
deal  of  girlish  fun.  Her  companion  enjoyed  her  little  humours 
and  egotisms,  enjoyed  the  walk  and  her  companionship.  After 
the  strain  of  the  day,  a  day  spent  either  in  the  toil  of  a  develop- 
ing business  or  under  a  difficult  pressure  of  thought,  this  light 
girl's  voice  brought  a  gay,  relaxed  note  into  life.  The  spring 
was  in  the  air,  and  his  youth  stirred  again  in  that  cavern  where 
grief  had  buried  it. 

'Oh,  dear,  I  must  go  home,'  she  said  at  last  regretfully, 
startled  by  a  striking  clock.  '  Father'll  be  just  mad.  Of  course, 
he'll  hear  all  about  my  meeting  you — I  don't  care.  I'm  not  going 
to  be  parted  from  all  my  friends  to  please  him,  particularly  now 
he's  turned  me  out  for  good — from  Dora  and — 

'From  you,'  she  would  have  said,  but  she  became  suddenly 
conscious  and  her  voice  failed. 

'  No,  indeed  !  And  your  friends  won't  forget  you,  Miss  Lucy. 
You'll  go  and  see  Dora  to-morrow  ? ' 

'  Yes,  if  I  can  give  them  the  slip  at  home.' 

There  was  a  pause,  and  then  he  said — 

'  And  will  you  allow  me  to  visit  you  at  Wakely  some  Sunday  ? 
I  know  those  moors  well.' 

She  reddened  all  over  with  delight.  There  was  something  in 
the  little  stiffness  of  the  request  which  gave  it  importance. 

'I  wish  you  would;  it's  not  far,'  she  stammered.  'Aunt 
Miriam  would  be  glad  to  see  you. ' 

They  walked  back  rapidly  along  Mosley  Street  and  into  Market 
Place.  There  she  stopped  and  shyly  asked  him  to  leave  her. 
Almost  all  the  Saturday-night  crowd  had  disappeared  from  the 
streets.  It  was  really  late,  and  she  became  suddenly  conscious 
that  this  walk  of  hers  might  reasonably  be  regarded  at  home  as  a 
somewhat  bold  proceeding. 

'I  wish  you'd  let  me  see  you  right  home,'  he  said,  detaining 
her  hand  in  his. 

'  Oh,  no,  no — I  shall  catch  it  enough  as  it  is.  Oh,  they'll  let 
me  in  !  Will  it  be  next  Sunday,  Mr.  Grieve  ? ' 

'  No,  the  Sunday  after.     Can  I  do  anything  for  you  ? ' 


422  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

He  came  closer  to  her,  seeming  to  envelope  her  in  his  tall, 
protecting  presence.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to  ignore  her 
girlish  flutter,  her  evident  joy  in  having  seen  and  talked  to  him 
again,  in  spite  of  her  dread  of  her  father.  Nor  did  he  wish  to 
ignore  them.  They  were  unexpectedly  sweet  to  him,  and  he 
surprised  himself. 

'Oh  no,  nothing, — but  it's  very  good  of  you  to  say  so,'  she 
said  impulsively  ;  '  very.  Good  night  again. ' 

And  instinctively  she  put  out  another  small  hand,  which  also 
he  took,  so  holding  her  prisoner  a  moment. 

'Look  here,'  he  said,  Til  just  slip  down  that  side  of  the 
Close  and  wait  till  I  see  you  get  safe  in.  Good  night ;  I  am  glad 
I  saw  you  ! ' 

She  ran  away  in  a  blind  whirl  of  happiness  up  the  steps  into 
the  passage  of  Half  Street.  He  slipped  down  to  the  left  and 
waited,  looking  through  the  railings  across  the  corner  of  the 
Close,  his  eyes  fixed  on  that  upper  window,  where  he  had  so  often 
sat,  parleying  alternately  with  the  cathedral  and  Voltaire. 

Lucy  rang,  the  door  opened,  there  were  loud  sounds  within, 
but  she  was  admitted  ;  it  closed  behind  her. 

David  was  soon  in  his  back  room,  kindling  a  lamp  and  a  bit  of 
fire  to  read  by.  But  when  it  was  done  he  sat  bent  forward  over 
the  blaze,  till  the  cathedral  clock  chimed  the  small  hours,  thinking. 

She  was  so  unformed  and  childish,  that  poor  little  thing ! — 
surely  a  man  could  make  what  he  would  of  her.  She  would  give 
him  affection  and  duty ;  the  core  of  the  nature  was  sound,  and 
her  little  humours  would  bring  life  into  a  house. 

He  had  but  to  put  out  his  hand — that  was  plain  enough.  And 
why  not?  Was  any  humbler  draught  to  be  for  ever  put  aside, 
because  the  best  wine  had  been  poured  to  waste  ? 

Then  the  rebellions  of  an  unquenched  romance,  an  untamed 
heart,  beset  him.  Surging  waves  of  bitterness  and  pain,  the 
after-swell  of  that  tempest  in  which  his  youth  had  so  nearly 
foundered,  seemed  to  bear  him  away  to  seas  of  desolation. 

After  all  that  had  happened,  the  greed  for  personal  joy  he 
every  now  and  then  detected  in  himself  surprised  and  angered 
him  by  its  strength.  The  truth  was  that  in  whole  tracts  of  his 
nature  he  was  still  a  boy,  still  young  beyond  his  years,  and  it  was 
the  conflict  in  him  between  youth's  hot  immaturity  and  a  man's 
baffling  experience  which  made  the  pain  of  his  life. 

He  meant  to  go  to  Wakely  on  the  next  Sunday  but  one — that 
he  was  certain  of — but  as  to  what  he  was  to  do  and  say  when  he 
got  there  he  was  perhaps  culpably  uncertain.  But  in  his  weakness 
and  sehnsucht  he  dwelt  upon  the  thought  of  Lucy  more  and  more. 

Then  Dora — foolish  saint ! — came  upon  the  scene. 

Lucy  found  her  way  to  the  street  in  Ancoats  where  Dora  lived, 
the  morning  after  her  talk  with  David,  and  the  two  cousins  spent 
an  agitated  hour  together.  Lucy  could  hardly  find  time  to  ask 
Dora  about  her  sorrows,  so  occupied  was  she  in  recounting  all  her 


CHAP,  xv  STORM   AND   STRESS  438 

own  adventures.  She  was  to  go  back  to  Wakely  that  very 
afternoon.  Purcell  had  been  absolutely  unapproachable  since  the 
cousin  who  had  escorted  Lucy  to  the  Free  Trade  Hall  the  night 
before  had  in  her  own  defence  revealed  the  secret  of  that  young 
lady's  behaviour.  Pack  and  go  she  should !  He  wouldn't  have 
such  a  hussy  another  night  under  his  roof.  Let  them  do  with 
her  as  could. 

'I  thought  he  would  have  beaten  me  this  morning,'  Lucy 
candidly  confessed.  There  was  a  red  spot  on  each  cheek,  and 
she  was  evidently  glorying  in  martyrdom.  '  He  looked  like  a 
devil — a  real  devil.  Why  can't  he  be  fond  of  me,  and  let  me 
alone,  like  other  girls'  fathers  ?  I  believe  he  is  fond  of  me 
somehow,  but  he  wants  to  break  my  spirit — 

She  tossed  her  head  significantly. 

'Lucy,  you  know  you  ought  to  give  in  when  you  can,'  said  the 
perplexed  Dora,  with  rebuke  in  her  voice. 

'  Oh,  nonsense  ! '  said  Lucy.  '  You  can't — it's  ridiculous. 
Well,  he'll  quarrel  with  that  woman  some  day — I'm  sure  she's 
his  match — and  then  maybe  he'll  want  me  back.  But  perhaps  he 
won't  get  me.' 

Dora  looked  up  with  a  curious  expression,  half  smiling,  half 
wistful.  She  had  already  heard  all  the  story  of  the  walk. 

'  O  Dora  ! '  cried  the  child,  laying  down  her  head  on  the  table 
beneath  her  cousin's  eyes,  '  Dora,  I  do  believe  he's  beginning  to 
care.  You  see  he  asked  to  come  to  Wakely.  I  didn't  ask  him. 
Oh,  if  it  all  comes  to  nothing  again,  I  shall  break  my  heart ! ' 

Dora  smoothed  the  fine  brown  hair,  and  said  affectionate 
things,  but  vaguely,  as  if  she  was  not  quite  certain  what  to  say. 

'He  does  look  quite  different,  somehow,'  continued  Lucy. 
'  Why  do  you  think  he  was  so  long  away  over  there,  Dora  ? 
Father  says  nasty  things  about  it — says  he  fell  into  bad  company 
and  lost  his  money.' 

'  I  don't  know  how  uncle  Purcell  can  know,'  said  Dora  indig- 
nantly. '  He's  always  thinking  the  worst  of  people.  He  was  ill, 
for  Mr.  Ancrum  told  me,  and  he's  the  only  person  that  does 
know.  And  anyone  can  see  he  isn't  strong  yet. ' 

'  Oh,  and  he  is  so  handsome  ! '  sighed  Lucy,  '  handsomer  than 
ever.  There  isn't  a  man  in  Manchester  to  touch  him.' 

Dora  laughed  out  and  called  her  a  '  little  silly. '  But,  as 
privately  in  her  heart  of  hearts  she  was  of  the  same  opinion,  her 
reproof  had  not  much  force. 

When  Lucy  left,  Dora  put  away  her  work,  and,  lifting  a 
flushed  face,  walked  to  the  window  and  stood  there  looking  out. 
A  pale  April  sun  was  shining  on  the  brewery  opposite,  and 
touched  the  dark  waters  of  the  canal  under  the  bridge  to  the  left. 
The  roofs  of  the  squalid  houses  abutting  on  the  brewery  were  wet 
with  rain.  Through  a  gap  she  could  see  a  laundress's  back-yard 
mainly  filled  with  drying  clothes,  but  boasting  besides  a  couple  of 
pink  flowering  currants  just  out-  and  holding  their  own  for  a  few 


424  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

brief  days  against  the  smuts  of  Manchester.  Here  and  there  a  man 
out  of  work  lounged,  pipe  in  mouth,  at  his  open  door,  silently 
absorbing  the  sunshine  and  the  cheerfulness  of  the  moist  blue 
over  the  house-tops.  There  was  a  new  sweetness  and  tenderness 
in  the  spring  air — or  were  they  in  Dora's  soul  ? 

She  leant  her  head  against  the  window,  and  remained  there 
with  her  hands  clasped  before  her  for  some  little  time — for  her,  a 
most  unusual  idleness. 

Yes,  Lucy  was  very  obstinate.  Dora  had  never  thought  she 
would  have  the  courage  to  fight  her  father  in  this  way.  And 
selfish,  too.  She  had  spoken  only  once  of  Daddy,  and  that  in  a 
way  to  make  the  daughter  wince.  But  she  was  so  young — such 
a  child ! — and  would  be  ruined  if  she  were  left  to  this  casual 
life,  and  people  who  didn't  understand  her.  A  husband  to  take 
care  of  her,  and  children — they  would  be  the  making  of  her. 

And  he  !  Dora's  eyes  filled  with  tears.  All  this  winter  the 
change  in  him,  the  silent  evidences  of  a  shock  all  the  more  tragic 
to  her  because  of  its  mystery,  had  given  him  a  kind  of  sacredness 
in  her  eyes.  She  fell  thinking,  besides,  of  the  times  lately  he  had 
been  to  church  with  her.  Ah,  she  was  glad  he  had  heard  that 
sermon,  that  beautiful  sermon  of  Canon  Welby's  in  Passion  Week! 
He  had  said  nothing  about  it,  but  she  knew  it  had  been  meant  for 
clever,  educated  men — men  like  him.  The  church,  indeed,  had 
been  full  of  men — her  neighbours  had  told  her  that  several  of  the 
gentlemen  from  Owens  College  had  been  there. 

That  evening  David  knocked  at  the  door  below  about  half-past 
eight.  Dora  got  up  quickly  and  went  across  to  her  room-fellow, 
a  dark-faced  stooping  girl,  who  took  her  shirt-maker's  slavery 
without  a  murmur,  and  loved  Dora. 

'  Would  you  mind,  Mary  ? '  she  said  timidly.  '  I  want  to 
speak  to  Mr.  Grieve.' 

The  girl  looked  up,  understood,  stopped  her  machine,  and, 
hastily  gathering  some  pieces  together  that  wanted  buttonholes, 
went  off  into  the  little  inner  room  and  shut  the  door. 

Dora  knelt  and  with  restless  hands  put  the  bit  of  fire  together. 
She  had  just  thrown  a  handkerchief  over  her  canaries.  On  the 
frame  a  piece  of  her  work,  a  fine  altar-cloth  gleaming  with  golds, 
purples,  and  pale  pinks,  stood  uncovered.  The  deal  table,  the 
white  walls  on  which  hung  Daddy's  old  prints,  the  bare  floor  with 
its  strip  of  carpet,  were  all  spotlessly  clean.  The  tea  had  been 
put  away.  Daddy's  vacant  chair  stood  in  its  place. 

When  David  came  in  he  found  her  sitting  pensively  on  a  little 
wooden  stool  by  the  fire.  Generally  he  gossipped  while  the  two 
girls  worked  busily  away — sometimes  he  read  to  them.  To-night 
as  he  sat  down  he  felt  something  impending. 

Dora  talked  of  Lucy's  visit.  They  agreed  as  to  the  folly  and 
brutality  of  Purcell's  treatment  of  her,  and  laughed  together  over 
the  marauding  stepmother. 

Then  there  was  a  pause.  Dora  broke  it.  She  was  sitting 
upright  on  the  stool,  looking  straight  into  his  face. 


CHAP,  xv  STORM  AND  STRESS  425 

'  Will  you  not  be  cross  if  I  say  something  ? '  she  asked,  catch- 
ing her  breath.  '  It's  not  my  business.' 

4  Say  it,  please.'    But  he  reddened  instantly. 

*  Lucy's — Lucy's — got  a  fancy  for  you,'  she  said  tremulously, 
shrinking  from  her  own  words.  '  Perhaps  it's  a  shame  to  say  it 
— oh,  it  may  be  !  You  haven't  told  me  anything,  and  she's  given 
me  no  leave.  But  she's  had  it  a  long  time. ' 

'  I  don't  know  why  you  say  so,'  he  replied  half  sombrely. 

His  flush  had  died  away,  but  his  hand  shook  on  his  knee. 

'Oh,  yes,  you  do,'  she  cried  ;  '  you  must  know.  Lucy  can't 
keep  even  her  own  secrets.  But  she's  got  such  a  warm  heart ! 
I'm  sure  she  has.  If  a  man  would  take  her  and  be  kind  to  her, 
she'd  make  him  happy.' 

She  stopped,  looking  at  him  intently. 

Then  suddenly  she  burst  out,  laying  her  hand  on  the  arm  of 
his  chair — Daddy's  chair  : 

'  Don't  be  angry  ;  you've  been  like  a  brother  to  me.' 

He  took  her  hand  and  pressed  it,  reassuring  her. 

'  But  how  can  I  make  her  happy  ? '  he  said,  with  his  head  on 
his  hand.  '  I  don't  want  to  be  a  fool  and  deny  what  you  say,  for 
the  sake  of  denying  it.  But — ' 

His  voice  sank  into  silence.  Then,  as  she  did  not  speak,  he 
looked  up  at  her.  She  was  sitting,  since  he  had  released  her, 
with  her  arms  locked  behind  her,  frowning  in  her  intensity  of 
thought,  her  last  energy  of  sacrifice. 

'  You  would  make  her  happy,'  she  said  slowly,  'and  she'd  be 
a  loving  wife.  She's  flighty  is  Lucy,  but  there's  nothing  bad  in 
her.' 

Both  were  silent  for  another  minute,  then,  by  a  natural 
reaction,  both  looked  at  each  other  and  laughed. 

'  I'm  making  rather  free  with  you,  I'm  bound  to  admit  that,' 
she  said,  with  a  merry  shamefaced  expression,  which  brought  out 
the  youth  in  her  face. 

'  Well,  give  me  time,  Miss  Dora.  If — if  anything  did  come  of 
it,  I  should  have  to  let  Purcell  know,  and  there'd  be  flat  war. 
You've  thought  of  that  ? ' 

Certainly,  Dora  had  thought  of  it.  They  might  have  to  wait, 
and  Purcell  would  probably  refuse  to  give  or  leave  Lucy  any 
money.  All  the  better,  according  to  David.  Nothing  would  ever 
induce  him  to  take  a  farthing  of  his  ex-master's  hoards. 

But  here,  by  a  common  instinct,  they  stopped  planning,  and 
David  resolutely  turned  the  conversation.  When  they  parted, 
however,  Dora  was  secretly  eager  and  hopeful.  It  was  curious 
how  little  the  father's  rights  weighed  with  so  scrupulous  a  soul. 
Whether  it  was  his  behaviour  to  her  father  which  had  roused  an 
unconscious  hardness  even  in  her  gentle  nature,  or  whether  it 
was  the  subtle  influence  of  his  Dissent,  as  compared  with  the 
nascent  dispositions  she  seemed  to  see  in  David — anyway,  Dora's 
conscience  was  silent ;  she  was  entirely  absorbed  in  her  own  act, 
and  in  the  prospects  of  the  other  two. 


426  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 


CHAPTER  XVI 

WHEN  David  reached  home  that  night  he  found  a  French  letter 
awaiting  him.  It  was  from  Louie,  still  dated  from  the  country 
town  near  Toulouse,  and  announced  the  birth  of  her  child — a 
daughter.  The  letter  was  scrawled  apparently  from  her  bed,  and 
contained  some  passionate,  abusive  remarks  about  her  husband, 
half  finished,  and  hardly  intelligible.  She  peremptorily  called  on 
David  to  send  her  some  money  at  once.  Her  husband  was  a  sot, 
and  unfaithful  to  her.  Even  now  with  his  first  child,  he  had 
taken  advantage  of  her  being  laid  up  to  make  love  to  other 
women.  All  the  town  cried  shame  on  him.  The  priest  visited 
her  frequently,  and  was  all  on  her  side. 

Then  at  the  end  she  wrote  a  hasty  description  of  the  child. 
Its  eyes  were  like  his,  David's,  but  it  would  have  much  hand- 
somer eyelashes.  It  was  by  far  the  best-looking  child  in  the 
place,  and  because  everybody  remarked  on  its  likeness  to  her,  she 
believed  Montjoie  had  taken  a  dislike  to  it.  She  didn't  care,  but 
it  made  him  look  ridiculous.  Why  didn't  he  do  some  work, 
instead  of  letting  her  and  her  child  live  like  pigs  ?  He  could  get 
some,  if  his  dirty  pride  would  let  him.  It  wasn't  to  be  supposed, 
with  this  disgusting  Commune  going  on  in  Paris,  and  everybody 
nearly  ruined,  that  anyone  would  want  statues — they  had  never 
even  sold  the  Maenad — but  somebody  had  wanted  him  to  do  a 
monument,  cheap,  the  other  day  for  a  brother  who  had  been 
killed  in  the  war  ;  and  he  wouldn't.  He  was  too  fine.  That  was 
like  him  all  over. 

It  was  as  though  he  could  hear  her  flinging  out  the  reckless 
sentences.  But  he  thought  there  were  signs  that  she  was  pleased 
with  the  baby — and  he  suddenly  remembered  her  tyrannous  pas- 
sion for  the  Mason  child. 

As  to  the  money,  he  looked  carefully  into  his  accounts.  For 
the  last  six  months  he  had  been  gathering  every  possible  saving 
together  with  a  view  to  the  History  of  Manchester,  which  he  and 
John  had  planned  to  begin  printing  in  the  coming  autumn.  It 
went  against  him  sorely  to  take  from  such  a  hoard  for  the  purpose 
of  helping  Jules  Montjoie  to  an  idler  and  easier  existence.  The 
fate  of  his  six  hundred  pounds  burnt  deep  into  a  mind  which  at 
bottom  was  well  furnished  with  all  the  old  Yorkshire  and  Scotch 
frugality. 

However,  he  sent  his  sister  money,  and  he  gave  up  in  thought 
that  fortnight's  walking  tour  in  the  Lakes  he  had  planned  for  his 
holiday.  He  must  just  stay  at  home  and  see  to  business. 

Then  next  morning,  as  it  happened,  he  woke  up  with  a  sudden 
hunger  for  the  country — a  vision  before  his  eyes  of  the  wide  bosom 
of  the  Scout,  of  fresh  airs  and  hurrying  waters,  of  the  sheep 
among  the  heather.  His  night  had  been  restless  ;  the  whole  of 
life  seemed  to  be  again  in  debate — Lucy's  figure,  Dora's  talk, 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM   AND   STRESS  427 

chased  and  tormented  him.  Away  to  the  April  moorland  !  He 
sprang  out  of  bed  determined  to  take  the  first  train  to  Clough 
End.  He  had  not  been  out  of  Manchester  for  months,  and  it  was 
luckily  a  Saturday.  Here  was  this  letter  of  Louie's  too — he  owed 
the  news  to  Uncle  Reuben.  Since  Reuben's  visit  to  Manchester,  a 
year  before,  there  had  been  no  communication  between  him  and 
them.  Six  years  !  How  would  the  farm — how  would  Aunt 
Hannah  look  ?  There  was  a  drawing  in  him  this  morning  towards 
the  past,  towards  even  the  harsh  forms  and  memories  of  it,  such 
as  often  marks  a  time  of  emotion  and  crisis,  the  moment  before 
a  man  takes  a  half-reluctant  step  towards  a  doubtful  future. 

But  as  he  journeyed  towards  the  Derbyshire  border,  he  was 
not  in  truth  thinking  of  Dora's  counsels  or  of  Lucy  Purcell  at  all. 
Every  now  and  then  he  lost  himself  in  the  mere  intoxication  of 
the  spring,  in  the  charm  of  the  factory  valleys,  just  flushing  into 
green,  through  which  the  train  was  speeding.  But  in  general 
his  attention  was  held  by  the  book  in  his  hand.  His  time  for 
reading  had  been  much  curtailed  of  late  by  the  toils  of  his  busi- 
ness. He  caught  covetously  at  every  spare  hour. 

The  book  was  Bishop  Berkeley's  '  Dialogues.' 

With  what  a  medley  of  thoughts  and  interests  had  he  been 
concerned  during  the  last  four  or  five  months  !  His  old  tastes  and 
passions  had  revived  as  we  have  seen,  but  unequally,  with  morbid 
gaps  and  exceptions.  In  these  days  he  had  hardly  opened  a  poet 
or  a  novelist.  His  whole  being  shrank  from  them,  as  though  it 
had  been  one  wound,  and  the  books  which  had  been  to  him  the 
passionate  friends  of  his  most  golden  hours,  which  had  moulded 
in  him,  as  it  were,  the  soul  wherewith  he  had  loved  Elise,  looked 
to  him  now  like  enemies  as  he  passed  them  quickly  by  upon  the 
shelves. 

But  some  of  his  old  studies — German,  Greek,  science  espe- 
cially— were  the  saving  of  him.  Among  some  foreign  books,  for 
instance,  which  he  had  ordered  for  a  customer  he  came  upon  a 
copy  of  some  scientific  essays  by  Littre.  Among  them  was  a 
survey  of  the  state  of  astronomical  knowledge  written  somewhere 
about  1835,  with  all  the  luminous  charm  which  the  great  Posi- 
tivist  had  at  command.  David  was  captured  by  it,  by  the  flight 
of  the  scientific  imagination  through  time  and  space,  amid  suns, 
planets  and  nebulae,  the  beginnings  and  the  wrecks  of  worlds. 
"When  he  laid  it  down  with  a  sigh  of  pleasure,  Ancrum,  who  was 
sitting  opposite,  looked  up. 

'  You  like  your  book,  Davy  ? ' 

'Yes,'  said  the  other  slowly,  staring  out  of  the  twilight 
window  at  the  gloom  which  passes  for  sky  in  Manchester.  Then 
with  another  long  breath, — '  It  makes  you  a  new  heaven  and  a 
new  earth ! ' 

A  similar  impression,  only  even  richer  and  more  detailed,  had 
been  left  upon  him  by  a  volume  of  Huxley's  '  Lay  Sermons. '  The 
world  of  natural  fact  in  its  overpowering  wealth  and  mystery  was 
thus  given  back  to  him,  as  it  were,  under  another  aspect  than 


428  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

that  torturing  intoxicating  aspect  of  art — one  that  fortified  and 
calmed.  All  his  scientific  curiosities  which  had  been  so  long  laid 
to  sleep  revived.  His  first  returning  joy  came  from  a  sense  of 
the  inexhaustibleness  and  infinity  of  nature. 

But  very  soon  this  renewed  interest  in  science  began  to  have 
the  bearing  and  to  issue  in  the  mental  activities  which,  all 
unknown  to  himself,  had  been  from  the  beginning  in  his  destiny. 
He  could  not  no\v  read  it  for  itself  alone.  That  new  ethical  and 
spiritual  susceptibility,  into  which  agony  and  loss  had  become 
slowly  transformed,  dominated  and  absorbed  all  else.  For  some 
time,  beside  his  scientific  books,  there  lay  others  from  a  class  not 
hitherto  very  congenial  to  him,  that  which  contains  the  great 
examples  in  our  day,  outside  the  poets,  of  the  poetical  or  imagi- 
native treatment  of  ethics — Emerson,  Carlyle,  Kuskin.  At  an 
age  when  most  young  minds  of  intelligence  amongst  us  are  first 
seized  by  these  English  masters,  he  had  been  wandering  in 
French  paths.  'Sartor  Eesartus,'  Emerson's  'Essays,'  'The 
Seven  Lamps,'  came  to  him  now  with  an  indescribable  freshness 
and  force.  Nay,  a  too  great  force  !  We  enjoy  the  great  prophets 
of  literature  most  when  we  have  not  yet  lived  enough  to  realise 
all  they  tell  us.  When  David,  wandering  at  night  with  Teufels- 
drockh  through  heaven  and  hell,  felt  at  last  the  hard  sobs  rising 
in  his  throat,  he  suddenly  put  the  book  and  others  akin  to  it  away 
from  him.  As  with  the  poets  so  here.  He  must  turn  to  some- 
thing less  eloquent — to  paths  of  thought  where  truth  shone  with 
a  drier  and  a  calmer  light. 

But  still  the  same  problems  !  Since  his  Eden  gates  had  closed 
upon  him,  he  had  been  in  the  outer  desert  where  man  has  wan- 
dered from  the  beginning,  threatened  with  all  the  familiar 
phantoms,  illusions,  mist-voices  of  human  thought.  What  was 
consciousness — knowledge — law  ?  Was  there  any  law — any 
knowledge — any  I? 

Naturally  he  had  long  ceased  to  find  any  final  sustenance  or 
pleasure  in  the  Secularist  literature,  which  had  once  convinced 
him  so  easily.  Secularism  up  to  a  certain  point,  it  began  to  seem 
to  him,  was  a  commonplace  ;  beyond  that  point,  a  contradiction. 
If  the  race  should  ever  take  the  counsel  of  the  Secularists,  or  of 
that  larger  Positivist  thought,  of  which  English  secularism  is  the 
popular  reflection,  the  human  intellect  would  be  a  poorer  instru- 
ment with  a  narrower  swing.  So  much  was  plain  to  him.  For 
nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  some  of  the  finest  powers 
and  noblest  work  of  the  human  mind  have  been  developed  by  the 
struggle  to  know  what  the  Secularist  declares  is  neither  knowable 
nor  worth  knowing. 

Yet  the  histories  of  philosophy  which  he  began  to  turn  over 
were  in  truth  no  more  fruitful  to  him  than  the  talk  of  the 
Reasoner.  They  stimulated  his  powers  of  apprehension  and 
analysis  ;  and  the  great  march  of  human  debate  from  century  to 
century  touched  his  imagination.  But  in  these  summaries  of  the 
philosophical  field  his  inmost  life  appropriated  nothing.  Once  by 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM   AND   STRESS  429 

a  sort  of  reaction  he  fell  upon  Hume  again,  pining  for  the  old 
intellectual  clearness  of  impression,  though  it  were  a  clearness  of 
limit  and  negation.  But  he  had  hardly  begun  the  '  Treatise '  or 
the  'Essays'  before  his  soul  rose  against  them,  crying  for  he 
knew  not  what,  only  that  it  was  for  nothing  they  could  give. 

Then  by  chance  a  little  Life  of  Berkeley,  and  upon  it  an  old 
edition  of  the  works,  fell  into  his  hands.  As  he  was  turning  over 
the  leaves,  the  '  Alciphron '  so  struck  him  that  he  turned  to  the 
first  page  of  the  first  volume,  and  evening  after  evening  read 
the  whole  through  with  a  devouring  energy  that  never  flagged. 
When  it  was  over  he  was  a  different  being.  The  mind  had  crys- 
tallised afresh. 

It  was  his  first  serious  grapple  with  the  fundamental  problems 
of  knowledge.  And,  to  a  nature  which  had  been  so  tossed  and 
bruised  in  the  great  unregarding  tide  of  things,  which  had  felt 
itself  the  mere  chattel  of  a  callous  universe,  of  no  account  or  dig- 
nity either  to  gods  or  men,  what  strange  exaltation  there  was  in 
the  general  suggestion  of  Berkeley's  thought  !  The  mind,  the 
source  of  all  that  is ;  the  impressions  on  the  senses,  merely  the 
speech  of  the  Eternal  Mind  to  ours,  a  Visual  Language,  whereof 
man's  understanding  is  perpetually  advancing,  which  has  been 
indeed  contrived  for  his  education  ;  man,  naturally  immortal, 
king  of  himself  and  of  the  senses,  inalienably  one — if  he  would 
but  open  his  eyes  and  see — with  all  that  is  Divine,  true,  eternal : 
the  soul  that  had  been  crushed  by  grief  and  self -contempt  revived 
at  the  mere  touch  of  these  vast  possibilities  like  a  trampled  plant. 
Not  that  it  absorbed  them  yet,  made  them  its  own  ;  but  they 
made  a  healing  stimulating  atmosphere  in  which  it  seemed  once 
more  possible  for  it  to  grow  into  a  true  manhood.  The  spiritual 
hypothesis  of  things  was  for  the  first  time  presented  in  such  a 
way  as  to  take  imaginative  hold  without  exciting  or  harrowing 
the  feelings  ;  he  saw  the  world  reversed,  in  a  pure  light  of 
thought,  as  Berkeley  saw  it,  and  all  the  horizon  of  things  fell 
back. 

Now — on  this  April  afternoon — as  the  neighbourhood  of 
Manchester  was  left  behind,  as  the  long  woodclad  valleys  and 
unpolluted  streams  began  to  prophesy  of  Derbyshire  and  the 
Peak,  David,  his  face  pressed  against  the  window,  fell  into  a 
dream  with  Berkeley  and  with  nature.  Oh  for  knowledge  !  for 
verification  !  He  began  dimly  and  passionately  to  see  before  him 
a  life  devoted  to  thought — a  life  in  which  science  after  science 
should  become  the  docile  instrument  of  a  mind  still  pressing  on 
and  on  into  the  shadowy  realm,  till,  in  Berkeley's  language,  the 
darkness  part,  and  it  '  recover  the  lost  region  of  light '  ! 

But  in  the  very  midst  of  this  overwhelming  vision  he  said 
suddenly  to  himself : 

'There  is  another  way — another  answer — Dora's  way  and 
Ancrum's.' 

Aye,  the  way  of  faith,  which  asks  for  no  length  of  years  in 
which  to  win  the  goal,  which  is  there  at  once — in  the  beat  of  a 


430  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

wing — safe  on  the  breast  of  God  !  He  thought  of  it  as  he  had 
seen  it  illustrated  in  his  friend  and  in  Dora,  with  the  mixture  of 
attraction  and  repulsion  which,  in  this  connection,  was  now  more 
or  less  habitual  to  him.  The  more  he  saw  of  Dora,  the  more 
he  wondered — at  her  goodness  and  her  ignorance.  Her  positive 
dislike  to,  and  alienation  from  knowledge  was  amazing.  At  the 
first  indication  of  certain  currents  of  thought  he  could  see  her 
soul  shrivelling  and  shrinking  like  a  green  leaf  near  flame.  As 
he  had  gradually  realised,  she  had  with  some  difficulty  forgiven 
him  the  attempt  to  cure  Daddy's  drinking  through  a  doctor  ;  that 
anyone  should  think  sin  could  be  reached  by  medicine — it  was  in 
effect  to  throw  doubt  on  the  necessity  of  God's  grace  !  And  she 
could  not  bear  that  he  should  give  her  information  from  the 
books  he  read  about  the  Bible  or  early  Christianity.  His 
detached,  though  never  hostile,  tone  was  clearly  intolerable  to 
her.  She  could  not  and  would  not  suffer  it,  would  take  any 
means  of  escaping  it. 

Then  that  Passion-week  sermon  she  had  taken  him  to  hear  ; 
which  had  so  moved  her,  with  which  she  had  so  sweetly  and 
persistently  assumed  his  sympathy  !  The  preacher  had  been  a 
High  Church  Canon  with  a  considerable  reputation  for  eloquence. 
The  one  o'clock  service  had  been  crowded  with  business  and 
professional  men.  David  had  never  witnessed  a  more  tempting 
opportunity.  But  how  hollow  and  empty  the  whole  result !  "What 
foolish  sentimental  emphasis,  what  unreality,  what  contempt  for 
knowledge,  yet  what  a  show  of  it ! — an  elegant  worthless  jumble 
of  Gibbon,  Horace,  St.  Augustine,  Wesley,  Newman  and  Mill, 
mixed  with  the  cheap  picturesque — with  moonlight  on  the  Cam- 
pagna,  and  sunset  on  Niagara — and  leading,  by  the  loosest 
rhetoric,  to  the  most  confident  conclusions.  He  had  the  taste  of 
it  in  his  mouth  still.  Fresh  from  the  wrestle  of  mind  into  which 
Berkeley  had  led  him,  he  fell  into  a  new  and  young  indignation 
with  sermon  and  preacher. 

Yet,  all  the  same,  if  you  asked  how  man  could  best  live,  apart 
from  thinking,  how  the  soul  could  put  its  foot  on  the  brute — 
where  would  Dora  stand  then  ?  What  if  the  true  key  to  life  lay 
not  in  knowledge,  but  in  will  ?  What  if  knowledge  in  the  true 
sense  was  ultimately  impossible  to  man,  and  if  Christianity  not 
only  offered,  but  could  give  him  the  one  thing  truly  needful — his 
own  will,  regenerate  ? 

But  with  the  first  sight  of  the  Clough  End  streets  these  high 
debates  were  shaken  from  the  mind. 

He  ran  up  the  Kinder  road,  with  its  villanous  paving  of  cobbles 
and  coal  dust,  its  mills  to  the  right,  down  below  in  the  hollow, 
skirting  the  course  of  the  river,  and  its  rows  of  workmen's  homes 
to  the  left  climbing  the  hill — in  a  tremor  of  excitement.  Six 
years  !  Would  anyone  recognize  him  ?  Ah !  there  was  Jerry's 
'  public,'  an  evil -looking  weather-stained  hole  ;  but  another  name 
swung  on  the  sign  ;  poor  Jerry  ! — was  he,  too,  gone  the  way  of 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM  AND   STRESS  431 

orthodox  and  sceptic  alike  ?  And  here  was  the  Foundry — David 
could  hardly  prevent  himself  from  marching  into  the  yard  littered 
with  mysterious  odds  and  ends  of  old  iron  which  had  been  the 
treasure  house  of  his  childhood.  But  no  Tom — and  no  familiar 
face  anywhere. 

Yes ! — there  was  the  shoemaker's  cottage,  where  the  prayer- 
meeting  had  been,  and  there,  on  the  threshold,  looking  at  the 
approaching  figure,  stood  the  shoemaker's  wife,  the  strange 
woman  with  the  mystical  eyes.  David  greeted  her  as  he  came 
near.  She  stared  at  him  from  under  a  bony  hand  put  up  against 
the  sun,  but  did  not  apparently  recognise  him  ;  he,  seized  with 
sudden  shyness,  quickened  his  pace,  and  was  soon  out  of  her 
sight. 

In  a  minute  or  two  he  was  at  the  Dye-works,  which  mark  the 
limit  of  the  town,  and  the  opening  of  the  valley  road.  Every 
breath  now  was  delight.  The  steep  wooded  hills  to  the  left,  the 
red-brown  shoulder  of  the  Scout  in  front,  were  still  wrapt  in  torn 
and  floating  shreds  of  mist.  But  the  sun  was  everywhere — above 
in  the  slowly  triumphing  blue,  in  the  mist  itself,  and  below,  on 
the  river  and  the  fields.  The  great  wood  climbing  to  his  left  was 
all  embroidered  on  the  brown  with  palms  and  catkins,  or  broken 
with  patches  of  greening  larch,  which  had  a  faintly  luminous 
relief  amid  the  rest.  And  the  dash  of  the  river — and  the  scents 
of  the  fields  !  He  leapt  the  wall  of  the  lane,  and  ran  down  to  the 
water's  edge,  watching  a  dipper  among  the  stones  in  a  passion  of 
pleasure  which  had  no  words. 

Then  up  and  on  again,  through  the  rough  uneven  lane,  higher 
and  higher  into  the  breast  of  the  Scout.  What  if  he  met  Jim 
Wigson  on  the  way  ?  What  if  Aunt  Hannah,  still  unreconciled, 
turned  him  from  the  door  ?  No  matter  !  Kancour  and  grief  have 
no  hold  on  mortals  walking  in  such  an  April  world — in  such  an 
exquisite  and  sunlit  beauty.  On  !  let  thought  and  nature  be 
enough !  Why  complicate  and  cumber  life  with  relations  that 
do  but  give  a  foothold  to  pain,  and  offer  less  than  they  threaten  ? 

There  is  smoke  rising  from  Wigson's,  and  figures  moving  in 
the  yard.  Caution  ! — keep  close  under  the  wall.  And  here  at 
last  is  Needham  farm,  at  the  top  of  its  own  steep  pitch,  with  the 
sycamore  trees  in  the  lane  beside  it,  the  Red  Brook  sweeping 
round  it  to  the  right,  the  rough  gate  below,  the  purple  Scout 
mist-wreathed  behind.  There  are  cows  lowing  in  the  yard,  a 
horse  grazes  in  the  front  field  ;  through  the  little  garden  gate  a 
gleam  of  sun  strikes  on  the  struggling  crocuses  and  daffodils 
which  come  up  year  after  year,  no  man  heeding  them  ;  there  is  a 
clucking  of  hens,  a  hurry  of  water,  a  flood  of  song  from  a  lark 
poised  above  the  field.  The  blue  smoke  rises  into  the  misty  air  ; 
the  sun  and  the  spring  caress  the  rugged  lonely  place. 

With  a  beating  heart  David  opened  the  gate  into  the  field, 
walked  round  the  little  garden,  let  himself  into  the  yard,  and 
with  a  hasty  glance  at  the  windows  mounted  the  steps  and 
knocked. 


432  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

No  answer.  He  knocked  again.  Surely  Aunt  Hannah  must 
be  about  somewhere.  Eleven  o'clock  ;  how  quiet  the  house  was  ! 

This  time  there  was  a  clatter  of  a  chair  on  a  flagged  floor 
inside,  and  a  person  with  a  slow  laboured  step  came  and  opened. 

It  was  Reuben.  He  adjusted  his  spectacles  with  difficulty, 
and  stared  at  the  intruder. 

'  Uncle  Reuben ! — I  thought  it  was  such  a  fine  day,  I'd  just 
run  over  and  see  the  old  place,  and  bring  you  some  news,'  said 
David,  smiling  and  holding  out  his  hand. 

Reuben  took  it,  stupefied.  'Davy,'  he  said,  trembling.  Then 
with  a  sudden  movement  he  whipped  the  door  to  behind  him,  and 
shut  it  close. 

'  Whist ! '  he  said,  putting  his  old  finger  to  his  lip.  '  T'  ser- 
vant's just  settlin  her  i'  t'  kitchen.  She's  noa  ready  yet — she's 
been  terr'ble  bad  th'  neet.  Coom  yo  here.'  And  he  descended 
the  steps  with  infinite  care,  and  led  David  to  the  wood-shed. 

'  Is  Aunt  Hannah  ill  ? '  asked  David,  astonished. 

Reuben  leant  against  the  wall  of  the  shed,  and  took  off  his 
spectacles,  as  though  to  wipe  them  with  his  old  and  shaking 
hands.  Then  David  saw  a  sort  of  convulsion  pass  across  his 
ungainly  face. 

'  Aye,'  he  said,  looking  down,  '  aye,  she's  broken  is  Hannah. 
Yo  didna  knaw  ? ' 

'  I've  heard  nothing.' 

Reuben  recounted  the  facts.  Since  her  stroke  of  last  spring, 
and  the  partial  recovery  which  had  followed  upon  it,  there  had  been 
little  apparent  change,  except  perhaps  in  the  direction  of  slowly 
increasing  weakness.  She  was  a  wreck,  and  likely  to  remain  so. 
Hardly  anybody  but  Reuben  could  understand  her  now,  and  she 
rarely  let  him  out  of  her  sight.  He  could  not  get  time  to  attend 
to  the  farm,  was  obliged  to  leave  things  to  the  hired  man,  and 
was  in  trouble  often  about  his  affairs. 

'Bit  yo  see,  she  hasna  t'  reet  use  of  her  speach,'  he  said, 
excusing  himself  humbly  to  this  handsome  city  nephew.  '  An' 
she  conno  gie  ower  snipin  aw  at  onst.  'Twudna  be  human 
natur'.  An'  t'  gell's  worritin'  an'  I  mun  tell  her  what  t'  missis 
says.' 

David  asked  if  he  might  see  her,  or  should  he  just  turn  back 
to  the  town?  Reuben  protested,  his  hospitality  and  family 
feeling  aroused,  his  poor  mind  torn  with  conflicting  motives. 

'  I  believe  she'd  fratch  if  she  didna  see  tha,'  he  said  at  last. 
'  A' 11  just  goo  ben,  and  ask.' 

He  went  in,  and  David  remained  in  the  wood-shed,  staring  out 
at  the  familiar  scene,  at  Louie's  window,  at  the  steps  where  he 
and  she  had  fed  the  fowls  together. 

The  door  opened  again,  and  Reuben  reappeared  on  the  steps, 
agitated  and  beckoning. 

David  went  in,  stepping  softly,  holding  his  blue  cloth  cap  in 
his  hand.  In  another  instant  he  stood  beside  the  old  cushioned 
seat  in  the  kitchen,  looking  down  at  Hannah. 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM  AND   STRESS  433 

This  Hannah  !  this  his  childhood's  enemy  !  this  shawled  and 
shrunken  figure  with  the  white  parchment  face  and  lantern 
cheeks  ! 

He  stooped  to  her  and  said  something  about  why  he  had 
come.  Reuben  listened  wondering. 

'  Louie's  married  and  got  a  babby — dosto  hear,  Hannah  ?  And 
he — t'  lad — did  yo  iver  see  sich  a  yan  for  growin  ? ' 

He  wished  to  be  mildly  jocular.  Hannah's  face  did  not  move. 
She  had  just  touched  her  nephew  with  her  cold  wasted  hand. 
Now  she  beckoned  to  him  to  sit  down  at  her  right.  He  did  so, 
and  then  for  the  first  time  he  could  believe  that  Hannah,  the  old 
Hannah,  was  there  beside  them.  For  as  she  slowly  studied  his 
dress,  the  Inverness  cape  then  as  now  a  favourite  garb  in  Man- 
chester, the  hand  holding  the  cap,  refined  since  she  saw  it  last  by 
commerce  with  books  and  pens  rather  than  hurdles  and  sheep, 
the  broad  shoulders,  the  dark  head,  her  eye  for  the  first  time  met 
his,  full,  and  a  weird  thrill  went  through  him.  For  that  eye — 
dulled,  and  wavering — was  still  Hannah.  The  old  hate  was  in  it, 
the  old  grudge,  all  that  had  been  at  least  for  him  and  Louie  the 
inmost  and  characteristic  soul  of  their  tyrant.  He  knew  in  an 
instant  that  she  had  in  her  mind  the  money  of  which  he  and  his 
sister  had  robbed  her,  and  beyond  that  the  offences  of  their  child- 
hood, the  infamy  of  their  mother.  If  she  could,  she  would  have 
hurled  them  all  upon  him.  As  it  was,  she  was  silent,  but  that 
brooding  eye,  like  a  smouldering  spark  in  her  blanched  face, 
spoke  for  her. 

Reuben  tried  to  talk.  But  a  weight  lay  on  him  and  David. 
The  gaunt  head  in  the  coarse  white  nightcap  turned  now  to  one, 
now  to  the  other,  pursued  them  phantom-like.  Presently  he 
insisted  that  his  nephew  must  dine,  avoiding  Hannah's  look. 
David  would  much  rather  have  gone  without ;  but  Reuben, 
affecting  joviality,  called  the  servant,  and  some  food  was  brought. 
No  attempt  was  made  to  include  Hannah  in  the  meal.  David 
supposed  that  it  was  now  necessary  to  feed  her. 

Reuben  talked  disjointedly  of  the  neighbours  and  his  stock, 
and  asked  a  few  questions,  without  listening  to  the  answers,  about 
David's  affairs,  and  Louie's  marriage.  In  Hannah's  presence  his 
poor  dull  wits  were  not  his  own  ;  he  could  in  truth  think  of 
nothing  but  her. 

After  the  meal,  however,  when  a  draught  of  ale  had  put  some 
heart  in  him,  he  got  up  with  an  air  of  resolution. 

'  I  mun  goo  and  see  what  that  felly's  been  doin'  wi'  th'  Hud- 
dersfield  beeasts,'  he  said  ;  '  wilta  coom  wi'  me,  Davy  ?  Mary  ! ' 

He  called  the  little  maid.  Hannah  suddenly  said  something 
incoherent  which  David  could  not  understand.  Reuben  affected 
not  to  hear. 

'  Mary,  gie  your  mistress  her  dinner,  like  a  good  gell.  An' 
keep  t'  house-door  open,  soa  'at  she  can  knock  wi'  t'  stick  if  she 
wants  owt.' 

He  stood  before  her  restless  and  ashamed,  afraid  to  look  at 


434  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  in 

her.  Then  he  suddenly  stooped  and  kissed  her  on  the  forehead. 
David  felt  a  lump  in  his  throat.  As  he  took  leave  of  her  the 
spell,  as  it  were,  of  Reuben's  piteous  affection  came  upon  him. 
He  saw  nothing  but  a  dying  and  emaciated  woman,  and  taking 
her  hand  in  his,  he  said  some  kind  natural  words. 

The  hand  dropped  from  his  like  a  stone.  As  he  stood  at  the 
door  behind  Reuben,  the  servant  came  forward  with  a  plate  of 
something  which  she  put  down  inside  the  fender.  As  she  did  so, 
she  awkwardly  upset  the  fire-irons,  which  fell  with  a  crash. 
Hannah  started  upright  in  her  chair,  with  a  rush  of  half-articu- 
late words,  grasping  fiercely  for  her  stick  with  glaring  eyes.  The 
servant,  a  wild  moorland  lass,  fled  terrified,  and  at  the  '  house ' 
door  turned  and  made  a  face  at  David. 

Outside  Reuben  slowly  mastered  himself,  and  woke  up  to  some 
real  interest  in  Louie's  doings.  David  told  him  her  story  frankly, 
so  far  as  it  could  be  separated  from  his  own,  and,  pressed  by 
Reuben's  questions,  even  revealed  at  last  the  matter  of  the  six 
hundred  pounds.  Reuben  could  not  get  over  it.  Sandy's  '  six 
hunderd  pund '  which  he  had  earned  with  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  all 
handed  over  to  that  minx  Louie,  and  wasted  by  her  and  a  rascally 
French  husband  in  a  few  months — it  was  more  than  he  could  bear. 

'  Aye,  aye,  marryin's  varra  weel,'  he  said  impatiently.  '.A 
grant  tha  it's  a  great  sin  coomin  thegither  without  marryin. 
But  Sandy's  six  hunderd  pund  !  ISToa,  I  conno  abide  sich  wark.' 

And  he  fell  into  sombre  silence,  out  of  which  David  could 
hardly  rouse  him.  Except  that  he  said  once,  '  And  we  that  had 
kep'  it  so  long.  I'd  better  never  ha  gien  it  tha.'  And  clearly 
that  was  the  bitter  thought  in  his  mind.  The  sacrifice  that  had 
taxed  all  his  moral  power,  and,  as  he  believed,  brought  physical 
ruin  on  Hannah,  had  been  for  nothing,  or  worse  than  nothing. 
Neither  he  nor  David  nor  anyone  was  the  better  for  it. 

'  I  must  go  over  the  shoulder  to  Frimley,'  said  David  at  last. 
They  had  made  a  half-hearted  inspection  of  the  stock  in  the  home 
fields,  and  were  now  passing  through  the  gate  on  to  the  moor. 
'  I  must  see  Margaret  Dawson  again  before  I  take  the  train  back.' 

Reuben  looked  astonished  and  shook  his  head  as  though  he  did 
not  remember  anything  about  Margaret  Dawson.  He  walked  on 
beside  his  nephew  for  a  while  in  silence.  The  Red  Brook  was 
leaping  and  dancing  beside  them,  the  mountain  ashes  were  just 
bursting  into  leaf,  the  old  smithy  was  ahead  of  them  on  the 
heathery  slope,  and  to  their  left  the  Downfall,  full  and  white, 
thundered  over  its  yellow  rocks. 

But  they  had  hardly  crossed  the  Red  Brook  to  mount  the  peak 
beyond  when  Reuben  drew  up. 

'  Noa ' — he  said  restlessly — '  noa.  I  mun  goo  back.  T'  gell's 
flighty  and  theer's  aw  maks  o'  mischief  i'  yoong  things.'  He 
stood  and  held  his  nephew  by  the  hand,  looking  at  him  long  and 
wistfully.  As  he  did  so  a  calmer  expression  stole  for  an  instant 
into  the  poor  troubled  eyes. 

'  Very  like  a'st  not  see  tha  again,  Davie.     "We  niver  know. 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM  AND   STRESS  435 

Livin's  hard  soomtimes — soa's  deein,  folks  say.  I'm  often  freet'nt 
of  deein' — but  I  should  na  be.  Theer's  noan  so  mich. peace  here, 
and  we  knaw  that  wi'  the  Lord  theer's  peace.' 

He  gave  a  long  sigh — all  his  character  was  in  it — so  tortured 
was  it  and  hesitating. 

They  parted,  and  the  young  man  climbed  the  hill,  looking 
back  often  to  watch  the  bent  figure  on  the  lower  path.  The  spell 
had  somehow  vanished  from  the  sunshine,  the  thrill  from  the 
moorland  air.  Life  was  once  more  cruel,  implacable. 

He  walked  fast  to  Frimley,  and  made  for  the  cottage  of  Mar- 
garet's brother.  He  remembered  its  position  of  old. 

A  woman  was  washing  in  the  '  house '  or  outer  kitchen.  She 
received  him  graciously.  The  weekly  money  which,  in  one  way 
or  another  he  bad  never  failed  to  pay  since  he  first  undertook  it, 
'had  made  him  well  known  to  her  and  her  husband.  With  a 
temper  quite  unlike  that  of  the  characteristic  northerner,  she 
showed  no  squeamishness  at  all  about  the  matter.  If  it  hadn't  been 
for  his  help,  they  would  just  have  sent  Margaret  to  the  workhouse, 
she  said  bluntly  ;  for  they  had  many  mouths  to  feed,  and  couldn't 
have  burdened  themselves  with  an  extra  one.  She  was  quite 
'  silly '  and  often  troublesome. 

'  Is  she  here  ? '  David  asked. 

'  Aye,  if  yo  goo  ben,  yo'll  find  her,'  said  the  woman,  carelessly 
pointing  to  an  inner  door.  '  I  conno  ha  her  in  here  washin  days, 
nor  the  children  noather.' 

David  opened  the  door  pointed  out  to  him.  He  found  him- 
self in  a  rough  weaving  shed  almost  filled  by  a  large  hand-loom, 
with  its  forest  of  woodwork  rising  to  the  ceiling,  its  rolls  of 
perforated  pattern-paper,  its  great  cylinders  below,  and  many- 
coloured  shuttles  to  either  hand.  But  to-day  it  stood  idle,  the 
weaver  was  not  at  work.  The  room  was  stuffy  but  cold,  and 
inexpressibly  gloomy  in  this  silence  of  the  loom. 

Where  was  Margaret  ?  After  a  minute's  search,  there,  beyond 
the  loom,  sitting  by  a  fireless  grate,  was  a  little  figure  in  a  bedgown 
and  nightcap,  poking  with  a  stick  amid  the  embers,  and  as  it 
seemed  crooning  to  itself. 

David  made  his  way  up  to  her,  inexpressibly  moved. 

'  Margaret ! ' 

She  did  not  know  him  in  the  least.  She  had  a  starved-looking 
cat  on  her  lap,  which  she  was  huddling  against  her  breast.  The 
face  had  fallen  away  almost  to  nothing,  so  small  and  thin  it  was. 
She  was  dirty  and  unkempt.  Her  still  brown  hair,  once  so  daintily 
neat,  straggled  out  beneath  her  torn  cap  ;  her  print  bed-gown  was 
pinned  across  her,  her  linsey  skirt  was  in  holes  ;  everywhere  the 
same  tale  of  age  neglected  and  unloved. 

When  David  first  stood  before  her  she  drew  back  with  a 
terrified  look,  still  clutching  the  cat  tightly.  But,  as  he  smiled  at 
her,  with  the  tears  in  his  eyes,  speaking  her  name  tenderly,  her 
frightened  look  relaxed,  and  she  remained  staring  at  him  with 
the  shrinking  furtive  expression  of  a  quite  young  child. 


436  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  m 

He  knelt  down  beside  her. 

'  Margaret — dear  Margaret — don't  you  know  me  ? ' 

She  did  not  answer,  but  her  wrinkled  eyes,  still  blue  and 
vaguely  sweet,  wavered  under  his,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that 
every  now  and  then  a  shiver  of  cold  ran  through  her  old  and  frail 
body.  He  went  on  gently,  trying  to  recall  her  wandering  senses. 
In  vain.  In  the  middle  she  interrupted  him  with  a  piteous  lip. 

'  They  promised  me  a  ribbon  for't,'  she  said,  complainingly, 
in  a  hoarse,  bronchitic  voice,  pointing  to  the  animal  she  held, 
and  to  its  lean  neck  adorned  with  a  collar  of  plaited  string,  on 
which  apparently  she  had  just  been  busy,  to  judge  from  the  odds 
and  ends  of  string  lying  about 

At  the  same  moment  David  became  aware  of  a  couple  of 
children  craning  their  heads  round  the  corner  of  the  loom  to 
look,  a  loutish  boy  about  eleven,  and  a  girl  rather  younger.  At 
sight  of  them,  Margaret  raised  a  cry  of  distress  and  alarm,  with 
that  helpless  indefinable  note  in  the  voice  which  shows  that 
personality,  in  the  true  sense,  is  no  longer  there. 

'  Go  away  ! '  David  commanded. 

The  children  did  not  stir,  but  grinned.  He  made  a  threatening 
movement.  Then  the  boy,  as  quick  as  lightning,  put  his  tongue 
out  at  Margaret,  and  caught  hold  of  his  sister,  and  they  clattered 
off,  their  mother  in  the  next  room  scolding  them  out  into  the 
street  again. 

And  this  the  end  of  a  creature  all  sacrifice,  a  life  all 
affection ! 

He  took  her  shivering  hand  in  his. 

'  Margaret,  listen  to  me.  You  shall  be  better  looked  after.  I 
will  see  to  that.  No  one  shall  be  unkind  to  you  any  more.  If 
they  won't  do  it  here,  my — my — wife  shall  take  care  of  you  ! ' 

He  lifted  her  hand  and  kissed  it,  putting  all  the  pity  and 
bitter  indignation  of  his  heart  into  the  action.  Margaret,  seeing 
his  emotion,  whimpered  too ;  otherwise  she  was  impassive. 

He  left  her,  went  into  the  next  room,  and  had  a  long  energetic 
talk  with  Margaret's  sister-in-law.  The  woman,  half  ashamed, 
half  recalcitrant,  in  the  end  promised  amendment.  What  business 
it  was  of  his  she  could  not  imagine  ;  but  the  small  weekly  addition 
which  he  offered  to  make  to  Margaret's  payments,  while  it  showed 
him  a  greater  fool  than  before,  made  it  impossible  to  put  his 
meddling  aside.  She  promised  that  Margaret  should  be  brought 
into  the  warm,  that  she  should  have  better  clothes,  and  that  the 
children  should  be  kept  from  plaguing  her. 

Then  he  departed,  and  mounting  the  moor  again,  spent  an 
hour  or  two  wandering  among  the  boggy  fissures  of  the  top,  or 
sitting  on  the  high  edges  of  the  heather,  looking  down  over  the 
dark  and  craggy  splendour  of  the  hill  immediately  around  and 
beneath  him,  on  and  away  through  innumerable  paling  shades  of 
distance  to  the  blue  "Welsh  border.  His  speculative  fervour  was 
all  gone.  Reuben,  Hannah,  Margaret,  these  figures  of  suffering 
and  pain  had  brought  him  close  to  earth  again.  The  longing  for 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM  AND   STRESS  437 

a  human  hand  in  his,  for  a  home,  wife,  children  to  spend  himself 
upon,  to  put  at  least  for  a  while  between  him  and  this  uncon- 
querable '  something  which  infects  the  world,'  became  in  this  long 
afternoon  a  physical  pain  not  to  be  resisted.  He  thought  more 
and  more  steadily  of  Lucy,  schooling  himself,  idealising  her. 

It  was  the  Sunday  before  Whitsunday.  David  was  standing 
outside  a  trim  six-roomed  house  in  the  upper  part  of  the  little 
Lancashire  town  of  Wakely,  waiting  for  Lucy  Purcell. 

She  came  at  last,  flushed  and  discomposed,  pulling  the  door 
hastily  to  behind  her. 

They  walked  on  a  short  distance,  talking  disconnectedly  of 
the  weather,  the  mud,  and  the  way  on  to  the  moor,  till  she  said 
suddenly  : 

'  I  wish  people  wouldn't  be  so  good  and  so  troublesome  ! ' 

'  Did  Robert  wish  to  keep  you  at  home  ? '  inquired  David, 
laughing. 

'  Well,  he  didn't  want  me  to  come  out  with — anybody  but 
him,'  she  said,  flushing.  '  And  it's  so  bad,  because  one  can't  be 
cross.  I  don't  know  how  it  is,  but  they're  just  the  best  people  here 
that  ever  walked  1 ' 

She  looked  up  at  him  seriously,  an  unusual  energy  in  her 
slight  face. 

'  What  ! — a  town  of  saints  ? '  asked  David,  mocking.  It  was 
so  difficult  to  take  Lucy  seriously. 

She  tossed  her  head  and  insisted. 

Talking  very  fast,  and  not  very  consecutively,  she  gave  him 
an  account,  so  far  as  she  was  able,  of  the  life  lived  in  this  little 
town,  a  typical  Lancashire  town  of  the  smaller  and  more  homo- 
geneous kind.  All  the  people  worked  in  two  large  spinning  mills, 
or  in  a  few  smaller  factories  representing  dependent  industries, 
such  as  reed-making.  Their  work  was  pleasant  to  them.  Lucy 
complained,  with  the  natural  resentment  of  the  idle  who  see  their 
place  in  the  world  jeopardised  by  the  superfluous  energy  of  the 
workers,  that  she  could  never  get  the  mill  girls  to  say  that  the 
mill  hours  were  too  long.  The  heat  tried  them,  made  appetites 
delicate,  and  lung  mischief  common.  But  the  only  thing  which 
really  troubled  them  was  'half-time.'  Socially  everybody  knew 
everybody.  They  were  passionately  interested  in  each  other's 
lives  and  in  the  town's  affairs.  And  their  religion,  of  a  strong 
Protestant  type  expressed  in  various  forms  of  Dissent,  formed  an 
ideal  bond  which  kept  the  little  society  together,  and  made  an 
authority  which  all  acknowledged,  an  atmosphere  in  which  all 
moved. 

The  picture  she  drew  was,  in  truth,  the  picture  of  one  of  those 
social  facts  on  which  perhaps  the  future  of  England  depends. 
She  drew  it  girlishly,  quite  unconscious  of  its  large  bearings, 
gossiping  about  this  person  and  that,  with  a  free  expenditure  of 
very  dogmatic  opinion  on  the  habits  and  ways  which  were  not 
hers.  But,  on  the  whole,  the  picture  emerged,  and  David  had 


438  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  ra 

never  liked  her  talk  so  well.  The  little  self-centred  thing  had 
somehow  been  made  to  wonder  and  admire  ;  which  is  much  for 
all  of  us. 

And  she,  meanwhile,  was  instantly  sensible  that  she  was  in  a 
happy  vein,  that  she  pleased.  Her  eyes  danced  under  her  pretty 
spring  hat.  How  proud  she  was  to  walk  with  him — that  he  had 
come  all  this  way  to  see  her  !  As  she  shyly  glanced  him  up  and 
down,  she  would  have  liked  the  village  street  to  be  full  of  gazers, 
and  was  almost  loth  to  leave  the  public  way  for  the  loneliness  of 
the  moor.  What  other  girl  in  Wakely  had  the  prospect  of  such  a 
young  man  to  take  her  out  ?  Oh  !  would  he  ever,  ever  '  ask  her ' 
— would  he  even  come  again  ? 

At  last,  after  a  steep  and  muddy  climb,  through  uninviting 
back  ways,  they  were  out  upon  the  moor.  An  apology  for  a  moor 
in  David's  eyes  !  For  the  hills  which  surround  the  valley  of  the 
Irwell,  in  which  Wakely  lies,  are,  for  the  most  part,  green  and 
rolling  ground,  heatherless  and  cragless.  Still,  from  the  top  they 
looked  over  a  wide  and  wind-blown  scene,  the  bolder  moors  of 
Eochdale  behind  them,  and  in  front  the  long  green  basin  in  which 
the  Irwell  rises.  Along  the  valley  bottoms  lay  the  mills,  with 
their  surrounding  rows  of  small  stone  houses.  Up  on  the  backs 
of  the  moors  crouched  the  old  farms,  which  have  watched  the 
mills  come,  and  will  perhaps  see  them  go  ;  and  here  and  there  a 
grim-looking  colliery  marked  a  fold  of  the  hill.  The  landscape 
on  a  spring  day  has  a  bracing  bareness,  which  is  not  without 
exhilaration.  The  wind  blows  freshly,  the  sun  lies  broadly  on 
the  hills.  England,  on  the  whole  at  her  busiest  and  best,  spreads 
before  you. 

They  were  still  on  the  top  when  it  occurred  to  them  that  they 
had  a  long  walk  in  prospect — for  they  talked  of  getting  to  the 
source  of  the  Irwell — and  that  it  was  dinner-time.  So  they  sat 
down  under  one  of  the  mortarless  stone  walls  which  streak  the 
moors,  and  David  brought  out  the  meal  that  was  in  his  pockets. 
They  ate  with  laughter  and  chat.  Pigeons  passed  overhead, 
going  and  coming  from  an  old  farm  about  a  hundred  yards  away  ; 
the  sky  above  them  had  a  lark  for  voice  singing  his  loudest ;  and 
in  the  next  field  a  peewit  was  wheeling  and  crying.  The  few 
trees  in  sight  were  struggling  fast  into  leaf.  Nature  even  in  this 
cold  north  was  gay  to-day  and  young. 

Suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  their  meal,  by  a  natural  caprice  and 
reaction  of  the  mind,  as  David  sat  looking  down  on  slate  roofs 
and  bare  winding  valley,  across  the  pale,  rain-beaten  grass  of  the 
moor,  all  the  northern  English  detail  vanished  from  his  eyes. 
For  one  suffocating  instant  he  saw  nothing  but  a  great  picture 
gallery,  its  dimly  storied  walls  and  polished  floor  receding  into 
the  distance.  In  front  Velazquez'  'Infanta,'  and  before  it  a 
figure  bent  over  a  canvas.  Every  line  and  tint  stood  out.  He 
heard  the  light  varying  voice,  caught  the  complex  grace  of  the 
woman,  the  strenuous  effort  of  the  artist. 


CHAP,  xvi  STORM   AND   STRESS  439 

Enough  !  He  closed  his  eyes  for  one  bitter  instant ;  then 
raised  them  again  to  England  and  to  Lucy. 

There  under  the  wall,  while  they  were  still  lingering  in  the 
sun,  he  asked  Lucy  Purcell  to  be  his  wife.  And  Lucy,  hardly 
believing  her  own  foolish  ears,  and  in  a  whirl  of  bliss  and  exulta- 
tion past  expression,  nevertheless  put  on  a  few  maidenly  airs  and 
graces,  coquetted  a  little,  would  not  be  kissed  all  at  once,  talked 
of  her  father  and  the  war  that  must  be  faced,  and  finally  surren- 
dered, held  up  her  scarlet  cheek  for  her  lord's  caress,  and  then 
sat  speechless,  hand  in  hand  with  him. 

But  Nature  had  its  way.  They  rambled  on,  crossing  the  stone 
stiles  which  link  the  bare  green  fields  on  the  side  of  the  moor. 
When  a  stile  appeared,  Lucy  would  send  him  on  in  front,  so  that 
she  might  mount  decorously,  and  then  descend  trembling  upon 
his  hand. 

Presently  they  came  to  a  spot  where  the  path  crossed  a  little 
streamlet,  and  then  climbed  a  few  rough  steps  in  a  steep  bank, 
and  so  across  a  stile  at  the  top. 

David  ran  up,  leapt  the  stile,  and  waited.  But  he  had  time 
to  study  the  distant  course  of  their  walk,  as  well  as  the  burnt  and 
lime-strewn  grass  about  him,  for  no  Lucy  appeared.  He  leant 
over  the  wall,  and  to  his  amazement  saw  her  sitting  on  one  of 
the  stone  steps  below,  crying. 

He  was  beside  her  in  an  instant.  But  he  could  not  loosen  the 
hands  clasped  over  her  eyes. 

'  Oh,  why  did  you  do  it  ? — why  did  you  do  it  ?  I'm  not  good 
enough — I  never  shall  be  good  enough  ! ' 

For  the  first  time  since  their  formal  kiss  he  put  his  arms 
round  her.  And  as  she,  at  last  forced  to  look  up,  found  herself 
close  to  the  face  which,  in  its  dark  refinement  and  power,  seemed 
to  her  to-day  so  far,  so  wildly  above  her  deserts,  she  saw  it  all 
quivering  and  changed.  Never  had  little  Lucy  risen  to  such  a 
moment ;  never  again,  perhaps,  could  she  so  rise.  But  in  that 
instant  of  passionate  humility  she  had  dropped  healing  and  life 
into  a  human  heart. 

Yet,  was  it  Lucy  he  kissed  ? — Lucy  he  gathered  in  his  arms  ? 
Or  was  it  not  rather  Love  itself  ? — the  love  he  had  sought,  had 
missed,  but  must  still  seek — and  seek  ? 


BOOK  IV 
MATURITY 


CHAPTER  I 

«  DADDY  ! '  said  a  little  voice. 

The  owner  of  it,  a  child  of  four,  had  pushed  open  a  glass  door, 
and  was  craning  his  curly  head  through  it  towards  a  garden  that 
lay  beyond. 

4  Yes,  you  rascal,  what  do  you  want  now  ? ' 

'  Daddy,  come  here  ! ' 

The  voice  had  a  certain  quick  stealthiness,  through  which, 
however,  a  little  tremor  of  apprehension  might  be  detected. 

David  Grieve,  who  was  smoking  and  reading  in  the  garden, 
came  up  to  where  his  small  son  stood,  and  surveyed  him. 

'  Sandy,  you've  been  getting  into  mischief.' 

The  child  laid  hold  of  his  father,  dragged  him  into  the  little 
hall,  and  towards  the  dining-room  door.  Arrived  there,  he 
stopped,  put  a  finger  to  his  lip,  and  laid  his  head  plaintively  on 
one  side. 

'  Zere's  an  awf.nl  sight  in  zere,  Daddy.' 

'  You  monkey,  what  have  you  been  up  to  ? ' 

David  opened  the  door.  Sandy  first  hung  back,  then,  in  a 
sudden  enthusiasm,  ran  in,  and  pointed  a  thumb  pink  with  much 
sucking  at  the  still  uncleared  dinner-table,  which  David  and  the 
child's  mother  had  left  half  an  hour  before. 

'  Zere's  a  pie  ! '  he  said,  exultantly. 

And  a  pie  there  was.  First,  all  the  salt-cellars  had  been  upset 
into  the  middle  of  the  table,  then  the  bits  of  bread  left  beside 
the  plates  had  been  crumbled  in,  then — the  joys  of  wickedness 
growing — the  mustard-pot  had  been  emptied  over  the  heap,  some 
bananas  had  been  stuck  unsteadily  here  and  there  to  give  it 
feature,  and  finally,  in  a  last  orgie  of  crime,  a  cruet  of  vinegar 
had  been  discharged  on  the  whole,  and  the  brown  streams  were 
now  meandering  across  the  clean  tablecloth. 

'  Sandy,  you  little  wretch  ! '  cried  his  father,  '  don't  you  know 
that  you  have  been  told  again  and  again  not  to  touch  the  things 
on  the  table  ?  Hold  out  your  hand  ! ' 

Sandy  held  out  a  small  paw,  whimpered  beforehand,  but 
never  ceased  all  the  time  to  watch  his  father  with  eyes  which 
seemed  to  be  quietly  on  the  watch  for  experiences. 

David  administered  two  smart  pats,  then  rang  the  bell  for  the 
housemaid.  Sandy  stationed  himself  on  the  rug  opposite  his 
father,  and  looked  at  his  reddened  hand,  considering. 

'  I  don't  seem  to  mind  much,  Daddy  ! '  he  said  at  last,  looking 
up. 

'  No,  sir.  Daddy  '11  have  to  try  and  find  something  that  you 
will  mind.' 


444  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

The  tone  was  severe,  and  David  did  his  best  to  frown.  In 
reality  his  eyes,  under  the  frown,  devoured  his  small  son,  and  he 
had  some  difficulty  in  restraining  himself  from  kissing  the  hand 
he  had  just  slapped. 

"When  the  housemaid  entered,  however,  she  showed  a  temper 
which  would  clearly  have  slapped  Master  Sandy  without  the 
smallest  compunction. 

The  little  fellow  stood  and  listened  to  her  laments  and  denun- 
ciations with  the  same  grave  considering  eyes,  slipped  his  hand 
inside  his  father's  for  protection,  watched,  like  one  enchained, 
the  gradual  demolition  of  the  pie,  and  when  it  was  all  gone,  and 
the  tablecloth  removed,  he  gave  a  long  sigh  of  relief. 

'  Say  you're  sorry,  sir,  to  Jane,  for  giving  her  so  much  extra 
trouble,'  commanded  his  father. 

'I'm  soddy,  Jane,'  said  the  child,  nodding  to  her;  'but  it 
was  a  p — wecious  pie,  wasn't  it  ? ' 

The  mixture  of  humour  and  candour  in  his  baby  eye  was 
irresistible.  Even  Jane  laughed,  and  David  took  him  up  and 
swung  him  on  to  his  shoulder. 

'Come  out,  young  man,  into  the  garden,  where  I  can  keep  an 
eye  on  you.  Oh  !  by  the  way,  are  you  all  right  again  ?' 

This  inquiry  was  uttered  as  they  reached  the  garden  seat,  and 
David  perched  the  child  on  his  knee. 

'  Yes,  I'm  bet — ter,'  said  the  child  slowly,  evidently  unwilling 
to  relinquish  the  dignity  of  illness  all  in  a  moment. 

'  Well,  what  was  the  matter  with  you  that  you  gave  poor 
mammy  such  a  bad  night  ? ' 

The  child  was  silent  a  moment,  pondering  how  to  express  him- 
self. 

'  I  was — I  was  a  little  sick  outside,  and  a  little  feelish  inside ' 
— he  wavered  on  the  difficult  word.  '  Mammy  said  I  had  the 
wrong  dinner  yesterday  at  Aunt  Dora's.  Zere  was  plums — lots 
o'  plums ! '  said  the  child,  clasping  his  hands  on  his  knee,  and 
hunching  himself  up  in  a  sudden  ecstasy. 

'  Well,  don't  go  and  have  the  wrong  dinner  again  at  Aunt 
Dora's.  I  must  tell  her  to  give  you  nothing  but  rice  pudding.' 

'  Zen  I  shan't  go  zere  any  more,'  said  the  child  with  determi- 
nation. 

'  What,  you  love  plums  more  than  Aunt  Dora  ? ' 

'  No — o,'  said  Sandy  dubiously,  '  but  plums  is  good  ! ' 

And,  with  a  sigh  of  reminiscence,  he  threw  himself  back  in 
his  father's  arm,  being,  in  fact,  tired  after  his  bad  night  and  the 
further  excitement  of  the  'pie.'  The  thumb  slipped  into  the 
pink  mouth,  and  with  the  other  hand  the  child  begau  dreamily 
to  pull  at  one  of  his  fair  curls.  The  attitude  meant  going  to 
sleep,  and  David  had,  in  fact,  hardly  settled  him,  and  drawn  a 
light  overcoat  which  lay  near  over  his  small  legs,  before  the 
fringed  eyelids  sank. 

David  held  him  tenderly,  delighting  in  the  weight,  the  warmth, 
the  soft  even  breath  of  his  sleeping  sou.  He  managed  somehow 


CHAP.  I  MATURITY  445 

to  relight  his  pipe,  and  then  sat  on,  dreamily  content,  enjoying 
the  warm  September  sunshine,  and  letting  the  book  he  had  brought 
out  lie  unopened. 

The  garden  in  which  he  sat  was  an  oblong  piece  of  ground, 
with  a  central  grass  plat  and  some  starved  and  meagre  borders  on 
either  hand.  The  gravel  in  the  paths  had  blackened,  so  had  the 
leaves  of  the  privets  and  the  lilacs,  so  also  had  the  red-brick  walls 
of  the  low  homely  house  closing  up  the  other  end  of  the  garden. 
Seventy  years  ago  this  house  had  stood  pleasantly  amid  fields  on 
the  northern  side  of  Manchester  ;  its  shrubs  had  been  luxuriant, 
its  roses  unstained.  Now  on  every  side  new  houses  in  oblong 
gardens  had  sprung  up,  and  the  hideous  smoke  plague  of  Man- 
chester had  descended  on  the  whole  district,  withering  and 
destroying. 

Yet  David  had  a  great  affection  for  his  house,  and  it  deserved 
it.  It  had  been  built  in  the  days  when  there  was  more  elbow- 
room  in  the  world  than  now.  The  three  sitting-rooms  on  the 
ground  floor  opened  sociably  into  each  other,  and  were  pleasantly 
spacious,  and  the  one  story  of  bedrooms  above  contained,  at  any 
rate  in  the  eyes  of  the  tenants  of  the  house,  a  surprising  amount 
of  accommodation.  When  all  was  said,  however,  it  remained,  no 
doubt,  a  very  modest  dwelling,  at  a  rent  of  somewhere  about 
ninety  pounds  a  year ;  but  as  David  sat  contemplating  it  this 
afternoon,  there  rose  in  him  again  the  astonishment  with  which 
he  had  first  entered  upon  it,  astonishment  that  he,  David  Grieve, 
should  ever  have  been  able  to  attain  to  it. 

'  Sandy  !  come  here  directly  !    Where  are  you,  sir  ? ' 

David  heard  the  voice  calling  in  the  hall,  and  raised  his  own. 

'  Lucy  !  all  right ! — he's  here.' 

The  glass  door  opened,  and  Lucy  came  out.  She  was  very 
smartly  arrayed  in  a  new  blue  dress  which  she  had  donned  since 
dinner  ;  yet  her  looks  were  cross  and  tired. 

'  Oh,  David,  how  stupid  !  Why  isn't  the  child  dressed  ? 
Just  look  what  an  object  !  I  sent  Lizzie  for  him  ten  minutes 
ago,  and  she  couldn't  find  him.' 

'  Then  Lizzie  has  even  less  brains  than  I  supposed,'  said  David 
composedly,  'seeing  that  she  had  only  to  look  out  of  a  back 
window.  What  are  you  going  to  do  with  him  ? ' 

'  Take  him  out  with  me,  of  course.  There  are  the  Watsons 
of  Fallowfield,  they  pestered  me  to  bring  him,  and  they're  at 
home  Saturdays.  And  aren't  you  coming  too  ? ' 

'  Madam,  you  are  unreasonable ! '  said  David,  smiling,  and 
putting  down  his  pipe  he  laid  an  affectionate  hand  on  his  wife's 
arm.  '  I  went  careering  about  the  world  with  you  last  Saturday 
and  the  Saturday  before,  and  this  week  end  I  must  take  for 
reading.  There  is  an  Oxford  man  who  has  been  writing  me  in- 
furiated letters  this  week  because  I  won't  let  him  know  whether 
we  will  take  up  his  pamphlet  or  no.  I  must  get  that  read,  and  a 
good  many  other  things,  before  to-morrow  night.' 

'  Oh,  I  know  ! '  said  Lucy,  pettishly.     '  There's  always  some- 


446  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

thing  in  the  way  of  what  I  want.  Soon  I  shan't  see  anything  of 
you  at  all ;  it  will  be  all  business,  and  yet  not  a  penny  more  to 
spend  !  Well,  then,  give  me  Sandy.' 

David  hesitated. 

'  Do  you  think  you'll  take  him  ? '  he  said,  bending  over  the 
little  fellow.  '  He  doesn't  look  a  bit  himself  to-day.  It's  those 
abominable  plums  of  Dora's  ! ' 

He  spoke  with  fierceness,  as  though  Dora  had  been  the 
veriest  criminal. 

'  Well,  but  what  nonsense  ! '  cried  Lucy  ;  '  they  don't  upset 
other  children.  I  can't  think  what's  wrong  with  him.' 

'He  isn't  like  other  children;  he's  of  a  finer  make,'  said 
David,  laughing  at  his  own  folly,  but  more  than  half  sincere  in 
it  all  the  same. 

Lucy  laughed  too,  and  was  appeased.  She  bent  down  to  look 
at  him,  confessed  that  he  was  pale,  and  that  she  had  better  not 
take  him  lest  there  should  be  catastrophes. 

'  Well,  then,  I  must  go  alone,'  she  said,  turning  away  discon- 
tentedly. '  I  don't  know  what's  the  good  of  it.  Nobody  cares  to 
see  me  without  him  or  you.' 

The  last  sentence  came  out  with  a  sudden  energy,  and  as  she 
looked  back  towards  him  he  saw  that  her  cheek  was  flushed. 

'  What,  in  that  new  gown  ? '  he  said,  smiling,  and  looked  her 
up  and  down  approvingly. 

Her  expression  brightened. 

'  Do  you  like  it  ? '  she  said,  more  graciously. 

'  Very  much.  You  look  as  young  as  when  I  first  teased  you  ! 
Come  here  and  let  me  give  you  a  "  nip  for  new."  ' 

She  came  docilely.  He  pretended  to  pinch  the  thin  wrist  she 
held  out  to  him,  and  then,  stooping,  lightly  kissed  it. 

'  Now  go  and  enjoy  yourself,'  he  said,  '  and  I'll  take  care  of 
Sandy.  Don't  tire  yourself.  Take  a  cab  when  you  want  one.' 

She  was  moving  away  when  a  thought  struck  her. 

4  What  are  you  going  to  say  to  Lord  Driffield  ? ' 

A  cloud  crossed  David's  look.  '  Well,  what  am  I  to  say  to 
him  ?  You  don't  really  want  to  go,  Lucy  ? ' 

In  an  instant  the  angry  look  came  back. 

4  Oh,  very  well ! '  she  cried.  '  If  you're  ashamed  of  me,  and 
don't  care  to  take  me  about  with  you,  just  say  it,  that's  all ! ' 

'  As  if  I  wanted  to  go  myself  ! '  he  remonstrated.  '  Why,  I 
should  be  bored  to  death ;  so  would  you.  I  don't  believe  there 
would  be  a  person  in  the  house  whom  either  of  us  would  ever 
have  seen  before,  except  Lord  Driffield.  And  I  can  see  Lord 
Driffield,  and  his  books  too,  in  much  more  comfortable  ways 
than  by  going  to  stay  with  him.' 

Lucy  stood  silent  a  moment,  trying  to  contain  herself,  then 
she  broke  out : 

'  That  is  just  like  you  ! '  she  said  in  a  low  bitter  voice  ;  '  you 
won't  take  any  chance  of  getting  on.  It's  always  the  way. 
People  say  to  me  that  you're  so  clever — that  you're  thought  so 


CHAP,  i  MATURITY  447 

much  of  in  Manchester,  you  might  be  anything  you  like.  And 
what's  the  good  ? — that's  what  I  think  !  If  you  do  earn  more 
money  you  won't  let  us  live  any  differently.  It's  always,  can't 
we  do  without  this  ?  and  can't  we  do  without  that  ?  And  as  to 
knowing  people,  you  won't  take  any  trouble  at  all !  Why  can't 
we  get  on,  and  make  new  friends,  and  be — be — as  good  as  any- 
body ?  other  people  do.  I  believe  you  think  I  should  disgrace 
myself — I  should  put  my  knife  in  my  mouth,  or  something,  if 
you  took  me  to  Lord  Driffield's.  I  can  behave  myself  perfectly, 
thank  you.' 

And  Lucy  looked  at  her  husband  in  a  perfect  storm  of  temper 
and  resentment.  Her  prettiness  had  lost  much  of  its  first  bloom  ; 
the  cheek-bones,  always  too  high,  were  now  more  prominent  than 
in  first  youth,  and  the  whole  face  had  a  restless  thinness  which 
robbed  it  of  charm,  save  at  certain  rare  moments  of  unusual 
moral  or  physical  well-being.  David,  meeting  his  wife's  sparkling 
eyes,  felt  a  pang  compounded  of  many  mixed  compunctions  and 
misgivings. 

'  Look  here,  Lucy ! '  he  said,  laying  down  his  pipe,  and 
stretching  out  his  free  hand  to  her,  '  don't  say  those  things. 
They  hurt  me,  and  you  don't  mean  them.  Come  and  sit  down  a 
moment,  and  let's  make  up  our  minds  about  Lord  Driffield.' 

Unwillingly  she  let  herself  be  drawn  down  beside  him  on  the 
garden  bench.  These  quarrels  and  reproaches  were  becoming  a 
necessity  and  a  pleasure  to  her.  David  felt,  with  a  secret  dread, 
that  the  habit  of  them  had  been  growing  upon  her. 

'  I  haven't  done  so  very  badly  for  you,  have  I  ? '  he  said  affec- 
tionately, as  she  sat  down,  taking  her  two  gloved  hands  in  his  one. 

Lucy  vehemently  drew  them  away. 

'  Oh,  if  you  mean  to  say,'  she  cried,  her  eyes  flaming,  '  that  I 
had  no  money,  and  ought  just  to  be  thankful  for  what  I  can  get, 
just  say  it,  that's  all.' 

This  time  David  flushed. 

'  I  think,  perhaps,  you'd  better  go  and  pay  your  calls,'  he  said, 
after  a  minute  ;  '  we  can  talk  about  this  letter  some  other  time.' 

Lucy  sat  silent,  her  chest  heaving.  As  soon  as  ever  in  these 
little  scenes  between  them  he  began  to  show  resentment,  she 
began  to  give  way. 

'I  didn't  mean  that,' she  said,  uncertainly,  in  a  low  voice, 
looking  ready  to  cry. 

'Well,  then,  suppose  you  don't  say  it,'  replied  David,  after  a 
pause.  '  If  you'll  try  and  believe  it,  Lucy,  I  don't  want  to  go  to 
Lord  Driffield's  simply  and  solely  because  I  am  sure  we  should 
neither  of  us  enjoy  it.  Lady  Driffield  is  a  stuck-up  sort  of  person, 
who  only  cares  about  her  own  set  and  relations.  We  should  be 
patronised,  we  should  find  it  difficult  to  be  ourselves — there 
would  be  no  profit  for  anybody.  Lord  Driffield  would  be  too 
busy  to  look  after  us  ;  besides,  he  has  more  power  anywhere  than 
in  his  own  house.' 

'  No  one  could  patronise  you,'  said  Lucy,  firing  up  again. 


448  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  David,  with  a  smile  and  a  stretch  ;  '  I'm 
shy — on  other  people's  domains.  If  they'd  come  here  I  should 
know  how  to  deal  with  them. ' 

Lucy  was  silent  for  a  while,  twisting  her  mouth  discontentedly. 
David  observed  her.  Suddenly  he  held  out  his  hand  to  her  again, 
relenting. 

'  Do  you  really  want  to  go  so  much,  Lucy  ? ' 

'Of  course  I  do,'  she  said,  pouting,  in  a  quick  injured  tone. 
'  It's — it's  a  chance,  and  I  want  to  see  what  it's  like  ;  and  I  should 
hardly  have  to  buy  anything  new,  unless  it's  a  new  bonnet,  and  I 
can  make  that  myself. ' 

David  sat  considering. 

*  Well ! '  he  said  at  last,  trying  to  stifle  his  sigh,  '  I  don't  mind. 
I'll  write  and  accept.' 

Lucy's  eye  gleamed.     She  edged  closer  to  her  husband. 

'  You  won't  mind  very  much  ?  It's  only  two  nights.  Isnt 
Sandy  cramping  your  arm  ? ' 

'  Oh,  we  shall  get  through,  I  dare  say.  No — the  boy's  all 
right.  I  say ' — with  a  groan — '  shall  I  have  to  get  a  new  dress 
suit?' 

'Yes,  of  course,'  said  Lucy,  with  indignant  eagerness. 

'  Well,  then,  if  you  don't  go  off,  and  let  me  earn  some  money, 
we  shall  be  in  the  Bankruptcy  Court.  Good-bye  !  I  shall  take 
the  boy  into  the  study,  and  cover  him  up  while  I  work.' 

Lucy  stood  before  him  an  instant,  then  stooped  and  kissed  him 
on  the  forehead.  She  would  have  liked  to  say  a  penitent  word  or 
two,  but  there  was  still  something  hard  and  hot  in  her  heart 
which  prevented  her.  Yet  her  husband,  as  he  sat  there,  seemed 
to  her  the  handsomest  and  most  desirable  of  men. 

David  nodded  to  her  kindly,  and  sat  watching  her  slim 
straight  figure  as  she  tripped  away  from  him  across  the  garden 
and  disappeared  into  the  house.  Then  he  bent  over  Sandy  and 
raised  him  in  his  arms. 

'  Don't  wake,  Sandy  ! '  he  said  softly,  as  the  little  man  half 
opened  his  eyes — '  Daddy's  going  to  put  you  to  bye  in  the  study.' 

And  he  carried  him  in,  the  child  breathing  heavily  against 
his  shoulder,  and  deposited  his  bundle  on  an  old  horsehair  sofa 
in  the  corner  of  his  own  room,  turning  the  little  face  away  from 
the  light,  and  wrapping  up  the  bare  legs. 

Then  he  sat  down  to  his  work.  The  room 'in  which  he  sat  was 
made  for  work.  It  was  walled  with  plain  deal  bookcases,  which 
were  filled  from  floor  to  ceiling,  largely  with  foreign  books,  as  the 
paper  covers  testified. 

For  the  rest,  anyone  looking  round  would  have  noticed  a  spa- 
cious writing-table  in  the  window,  a  large  and  battered  armchair 
beside  the  fire,  a  photograph  of  Lucy  over  the  mantelpiece,  oddly 
flanked  by  an  engraving  of  Goethe  and  the  head  of  the  German 
historian  Kanke,  a  folding  cane  chair  which  was  generally  used 
by  Lucy  whenever  she  visited  the  room,  and  the  horsehair  sofa, 
whereon  Sandy  was  now  sleeping  amid  a  surrounding  litter  of 


CHAP.  I  MATURITY  449 

books  and  papers  which  only  just  left  room  for  his  small  person. 
If  there  were  other  chairs  and  tables,  they  were  covered  deep  in 
literature  of  one  kind  or  another,  and  did  not  count.  The  large 
window  looked  on  the  garden,  and  the  room  opened  at  the  back 
into  the  drawing-room,  and  at  one  side  into  the  dining-room. 
On  the  rug  slept  the  short-haired  black  collie,  whom  David  had 
once  protected  from  Louie's  dislike — old,  blind,  and  decrepit,  but 
still  beloved,  especially  by  Sandy,  and  still  capable  of  barking  a 
toothless  defiance  at  the  outer  world. 

It  was  a  room  to  charm  a  student's  eyes,  especially  on  this 
September  afternoon  with  its  veiled  and  sleepy  sun  stealing  in 
from  the  garden,  and  David  fell  into  his  chair,  refilled  his  pipe, 
and  stretched  out  his  hand  for  a  batch  of  manuscript  which  lay 
on  his  table,  with  an  unconscious  sigh  of  satisfaction. 

The  manuscript  represented  a  pamphlet  on  certain  trade 
questions  by  a  young  Oxford  economist.  For  the  firm  of  Grieve 
&  Co.,  of  Manchester,  had  made  itself  widely  known  for  some 
five  years  past  to  the  intelligence  of  northern  England  by  its 
large  and  increasing  trade  in  pamphlets  of  a  political,  social,  or 
economical  kind.  They  supplied  mechanics'  institutes,  political 
associations,  and  workmen's  clubs  ;  nay,  more,  they  had  a  system 
of  hawkers  of  their  own,  which  bade  fair  to  extend  largely.  To 
be  taken  up  by  Grieve  &  Co.  was  already  an  object  to  young 
politicians,  inventors,  or  social  reformers,  who  might  wish  for 
one  reason  or  another  to  bring  their  names  or  their  ideas  before 
the  working-class  of  the  North.  And  Grieve  &  Co.  meant  David, 
sitting  smoking  and  reading  in  his  armchair. 

He  gave  the  production  now  in  his  hands  some  careful  reading 
for  half  an  hour  or  more,  then  he  suddenly  threw  it  down. 

'  Stuff  and  nonsense  ! '  he  said  to  himself.  '  The  man  has  got 
the  facts  about  those  Oklham  mills  wrong  somehow,  I'm  certain 
of  it.  Where's  that  letter  I  had  last  week?'  and,  jumping  up, 
he  took  a  bunch  of  keys  out  of  his  pocket  and  opened  a  drawer  in 
his  writing-table.  The  drawer  contained  mostly  bundles  of 
letters,  and  to  the  right  hand  a  number  of  loose  ones  recently 
received,  and  net  yet  sorted  or  tied.  He  looked  through  these, 
found  what  he  wanted,  and  was  about  to  close  the  drawer  when 
his  attention  was  caught  by  a  thick  black  note-book  lying  towards 
the  back  of  it.  He  took  it  out,  reminded  by  it  of  something  he 
had  meant  to  do,  and  carried  it  off  with  the  Oldham  letter  to  his 
chair.  Once  settled  there  again,  he  turned  himself  to  the  confu- 
tation of  his  pamphleteer.  But  not  for  long.  The  black  book  on 
his  knee  exercised  a  disturbing  influence  ;  his  under-mind  began 
to  occupy  itself  with  it,  and  at  last  the  Oldham  letter  was  hastily 
put  down,  and,  taking  out  a  pocket  pen,  David,  with  a  smile  at 
his  own  delinquency,  opened  the  black  book,  turned  over  many 
closely  written  pages,  and  settled  down  to  write  another. 

The  black  book  was  his  journal.  He  had  kept  it  intermit- 
tently since  his  marriage,  rather  as  a  journal  of  thought  than  as 
a  journal  of  events,  and  he  had  to  add  to  it  to-day  some  criti- 


450  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

cisms  of  a  recent  book  by  Renan  which  had  been  simmering  in 
his  mind  for  a  week  or  two.  Still  it  contained  a  certain  number 
of  records  of  events,  and,  taken  generally,  its  entries  formed  an 
epitome  of  everything  of  most  import— practical,  moral,  or 
intellectual — which  had  entered  into  David  Grieve's  life  during 
the  eight  years  since  his  marriage. 
For  instance  : — 

'  April  10,  1876. — Our  son  was  born  this  morning  between 
three  and  four  o'clock,  after  more  than  three  years  of  marriage, 
when  both  of  us  had  begun  to  despair  a  little.  Now  that  he  is 
come,  I  am  decidedly  interested  in  him,  but  the  paternal  relation 
hardly  begins  at  birth,  as  the  mother's  does.  The  father,  who 
has  suffered  nothing,  cannot  shut  his  eyes  to  the  physical  ugliness 
and  weakness,  the  clash  of  pain  and  effort,  in  which  the  future 
man  begins  ;  the  mother,  who  has  suffered  everything,  seems  by 
a  special  spell  of  nature  to  feel  nothing  after  the  birth  but  the 
mystery  and  wonder  of  the  new  creature,  the  life  born  from  her 
life — flesh  of  her  flesh — breath  of  her  breath.  Else  why  is  Lucy 
— who  bears  pain  hardly,  and  had  looked  forward  much  less 
eagerly  to  the  child,  I  think,  than  I  had — so  proud  and  content 
just  to  lie  with  the  hungry  creature  beside  her  ?  while  I  am  half 
inclined  to  say,  What !  so  little  for  so  much  ? — and  to  spend  so 
full  an  energy  in  resenting  the  pains  of  maternity  as  an  unmean- 
ing blot  on  the  scheme  of  things,  that  I  have  none  left  for  a  more 
genial  emotion.  Altogether,  I  am  disappointed  in  myself  as  a 
father.  I  seem  to  have  no  imagination,  and  at  present  I  would 
rather  touch  a  loaded  torpedo  than  my  son.' 

'  April  30. — Lucy  wishes  to  have  the  child  christened  at  St. 
Damian's,  and,  though  it  goes  against  me,  I  have  made  no  objec- 
tion. And  if  she  wishes  it  I  shall  go.  It  is  not  a  question  of 
one's  own  personal  consistency  or  sincerity.  The  new  individual- 
ity seems  to  me  to  have  a  claim  in  the  matter,  which  I  have  no 
business  to  override  because  I  happen  to  think  in  this  way  or 
that.  My  son  when  he  grows  up  may  be  an  ardent  Christian. 
Then,  if  I  had  failed  to  comply  with  the  national  religious  re- 
quirement, and  had  let  him  go  unbaptized,  because  of  my  own 
beliefs  or  non-beliefs,  he  might,  I  think,  rightly  reproach  me : 
"  I  was  helpless,  and  you  took  advantage." 

'  Education  is  different.  The  duty  of  the  parent  to  hand  on 
what  is  best  and  truest  in  his  own  mind  to  the  child  is  clear. 
Besides,  the  child  goes  on  to  carry  what  has  been  taught  him 
into  the  open  agora  of  the  world's  thought,  and  may  there  test 
its  value  as  he  pleases.  But  the  omission,  in  a  sense  irreparable, 
of  a  definite  and  customary  act  like  baptism  from  a  child's  exis- 
tence, when  hereafter  the  omission  may  cause  him  a  pang  quite 
disproportionate  to  any  likes  or  dislikes  of  mine  in  the  matter, 
appears  to  me  unjust. 

'  I  talk  as  if  Lucy  were  not  concerned  ! — or  Dora  !  In  reality 
I  shall  do  as  Lucy  wills.  Only  they  must  not  misunderstand  me 


CHAP.  I  MATURITY  451 

for  the  future.     If  my  son  lives,  his  father  will  not  hide  his 
heart  from  him. 

'  I  notice  for  the  first  time  that  Lucy  is  anxious  and  troubled 
about  her  father.  She  would  like  now  to  be  friends,  and  she 
took  care  that  the  news  of  the  child's  birth  should  be  conveyed 
to  him  at  once  through  a  common  acquaintance.  But  he  has 
taken  no  notice.  In  some  natures  the  seeds  of  affection  seem  to 
fall  only  on  the  sand  and  rock  of  the  heart,  where  because  they 
have  ' '  no  depth  of  earth  they  wither  away  ; "  while  the  seeds 
of  hatred  find  the  rich  and  good  ground,  where  they  spring  and 
grow  a  hundred-fold.' 

'  December  8,  1877. — I  have  just  been  watching  Sandy  on  the 
rug  between  the  two  dogs — Tim,  and  the  most  adorable  black 
and  tan  dachshund  that  Lord  Driffield  has  just  given  me.  Sandy 
had  a  bit  of  biscuit,  and  was  teasing  his  friends — first  thrusting 
it  under  their  noses,  and  then,  just  as  they  were  preparing  to 
gulp,  drawing  it  back  with  a  squeal  of  joy.  The  child's  evident 
mastery  and  sense  of  humour,  the  grave  puzzled  faces  of  the 
dogs,  delighted  me.  Then  a  whim  seized  me.  I  knelt  down  on 
the  rug,  and  asked  him  to  give  me  some.  He  held  out  the  biscuit 
and  laid  it  against  my  lips ;  I  saw  his  eye  waver ;  there  was  a 
gleam  of  mischief — the  biscuit  was  half  snatched  away,  and  I 
felt  absurdly  chagrined.  But  in  an  instant  the  little  face  melted 
into  the  sweetest,  keenest  smile,  and  he  almost  choked  me  in  his 
eagerness  to  thrust  the  biscuit  down  my  throat.  "  Poor  Daddy  ! 
Daddy  so  hungry." 

'  I  recall  with  difficulty  that  I  once  thought  him  ugly  and 
unattractive,  poor  little  worm  !  On  the  contrary,  it  is  quite  clear 
that,  whatever  ho  may  be  when  he  grows  up — I  don't  altogether 
trust  his  nose  and  mouth — for  a  child  he  is  a  beauty  !  His  great 
brown  eyes — so  dark  and  noticeable  beneath  the  fair  hair  in  the 
little  apple-blossom  face — let  you  into  the  very  heart  of  him. 
It  is  by  no  means  a  heart  of  unmixed  goodness.  There  is  a 
curious  aloofness  in  his  look  sometimes,  as  of  some  pure  intelli- 
gence beholding  good  and  evil  with  the  same  even  speculative 
mind.  But  this  strange  mood  breaks  up  so  humanly  !  he  has 
such  wiles — such  soft  wet  kisses  !  such  a  little  flute  of  a  voice 
when  he  wants  to  coax  or  propitiate  you  ! ' 

'  March  1878. — My  printing  business  has  been  growing  very 
largely  lately.  I  have  now  worked  out  my  profit-sharing  scheme 
with  some  minuteness,  and  yesterday  the  men,  John,  and  I  had 
a  conference.  In  part,  my  plan  is  copied  from  that  of  the 
"  Maison  Leclaire,"  but  I  have  worked  a  good  deal  of  my  own 
into  it.  Our  English  experience  of  this  form  of  industrial 
partnership  has  been  on  the  whole  unfavourable  ;  but,  after  a 
period  of  lassitude,  experiments  are  beginning  to  revive.  The 
great  rock  ahead  lies  in  one's  relation  to  the  trade  unions — one 
must  remember  that. 

'  To   the    practised   eye   the    men    to-day   showed    signs    of 


452  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

accepting  it  with  cordiality,  but  the  north-country  man  is  before 
all  things  cautious,  and  I  dare  say  a  stranger  would  have  thought 
them  cool  and  suspicious.  We  meet  again  next  week. 

'  I  must  explain  the  thing  to  Lucy — it  is  her  right.  She  may 
resent  it  vehemently,  as  she  did  my  refusal,  in  the  autumn,  to 
take  advantage  of  that  London  opening.  It  will,  of  course, 
restrict  our  income  just  as  it  was  beginning  to  expand  quickly. 
I  have  left  myself  adequate  superintendence  wages,  a  bonus  on 
these  wages  calculated  in  the  same  way  as  that  of  the  men,  a 
fixed  percentage  on  the  capital  already  employed  in  the  business, 
and  a  nominal  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  profits.  But  I  can  see 
plainly  that  however  the  business  extends,  we— she  and  I — shall 
never  "make  our  fortune"  out  of  it.  For  be yond  the  fifty  per 
cent,  of  the  profits  to  be  employed  in  bonuses  on  wages,  and  the 
twenty  per  cent,  set  aside  for  the  benefit  and  pension  society, 
my  thirty  per  cent,  must  provide  me  with  what  I  want  for 
various  purposes  connected  with  the  well-being  of  the  workers, 
and  for  the  widening  of  our  operations  on  the  publishing  side, 
in  a  more  or  less  propagandist  spirit. 

'  My  bookselling  business  proper  is,  of  course,  at  present 
outside  the  scheme,  and  I  do  not  see  very  well  how  anything 
of  the  kind  can  be  applied  to  it.  This  will  be  a  comfort  to 
Lucy ;  and  just  now  the  trade  both  in  old  and  foreign  books  is 
prosperous  and  brings  me  in  large  returns.  But  I  cannot 
disguise  from  myself  that  the  other  experiment  is  likely  to  absorb 
more  and  more  of  my  energies  in  the  future.  I  have  from  sixty 
to  eighty  men  now  in  the  printing-office — a  good  set,  take  them 
altogether.  They  have  been  gradually  learning  to  understand 
me  and  my  projects.  The  story  of  what  Leclaire  was  able  to  do 
for  the  lives  and  characters  of  his  men  is  wonderful  ! 

'  My  poor  little  wife  !  I  try  to  explain  these  things  to  her, 
but  she  thinks  that  I  am  merely  making  mad  experiments  with 
money,  teaching  workmen  to  be  "uppish"  and  setting  employers 
against  me.  When  in  my  turn  I  do  my  best  to  get  at  what  she 
means  by  "  getting  on,"  I  find  it  comes  to  a  bigger  house,  more 
servants,  a  carriage,  dinner  parties,  and,  generally,  a  move  ^o 
London,  bringing  with  it  a  totally  new  circle  of  acquaintance 
who  need  never  know  exactly  what  she  or  I  rose  from.  She 
does  not  put  all  this  into  words,  but  I  think  I  have  given  it 
accurately. 

'  And  I  should  yield  a  great  deal  more  than  I  do  if  I  had 
any  conviction  that  these  things,  when  got,  would  make  her 
happy.  But  every  increase  in  our  scale  of  living  since  we  began 
has  seemed  rather  to  make  her  restless,  and  fill  her  with  cravings 
which  yet  she  can  never  satisfy.  In  reality  she  lives  by  her 
affections,  as  most  women  do.  One  day  she  wants  to  lose  sight 
of  everyone  who  knew  her  as  Purcell's  daughter,  or  me  as 
Purcell's  assistant ;  the  next  she  is  fretting  to  be  reconciled  to 
her  father.  In  the  same  way,  she  thinks  I  am  hard  about 
money  ;  she  sees  no  attraction  in  the  things  which  fill  me  with 


CHAP.  I  MATURITY  458 

enthusiasm  ;  but  at  the  same  time,  if  I  were  dragged  into  a 
life  where  I  was  morally  starved  and  discontented,  she  would 
suffer  too.  No,  I  must  steer  through — judge  for  her  and  myself 
— and  make  life  as  pleasant  to  her  in  little  ways  as  it  can  be  made. 

'  Ah  !  the  gospel  of  "  getting  on  " — it  fills  me  with  a  kind  of 
rage.  There  is  an  essential  truth  in  it,  no  doubt,  and  if  I  had 
not  been  carried  away  by  it  at  one  time,  I  should  have  far  less 
power  over  circumstances  than  I  now  have.  But  to  square  the 
whole  of  this  mysterious  complex  life  to  it — to  drop  into  the 
grave  at  last,  having  missed,  because  of  it,  all  that  sheds  dignity 
and  poetry  on  the  human  lot,  all  that  makes  it  worth  while  or 
sane  to  hope  in  a  destiny  for  man  diviner  and  more  lasting  than 
appears — horrible  1 

'  Yet  Lucy  may  rightly  complain  of  me.  I  get  dreamy— I 
procrastinate.  And  it  is  unjust  to  expect  that  her  ideal  of  social 
pleasure  should  be  the  same  as  mine.  I  ought  to — and  I  will — 
make  more  effort  to  please  her.' 

'  July  1878. — I  am  in  Paris  again.  Yesterday  afternoon  I 
wandered  about  looking  at  those  wrecks  of  the  Commune  which 
yet  remain.  The  new  Hotel  de  Ville  is  rising,  but  the  Tuileries 
still  stands  charred  and  ruined  against  the  sky,  an  object  lesson 
for  Belleville.  I  walked  up  to  the  Arc  de  PEtoile,  and  coming 
back  I  strolled  into  a  little  leafy  open-air  restaurant  for  a  cup  of 
coffee.  Suddenly  I  recognised  the  place — the  fountain — a  large 
quicksilver  ball — a  little  wooden  pavilion  festooned  with  coloured 
lamps.  It  was  as  though  eight  years  were  wiped  away. 

1 1  could  not  stay  there.  But  the  shock  soon  subsided. 
There  is  something  bewildering,  de-personalising,  in  the  differ- 
ence between  one  stage  of  life  and  another.  In  certain  moods  I 
feel  scarcely  a  thread  of  identity  between  my  present  self  and 
myself  of  eight  years  ago. 

'  This  morning  I  have  seen  Louie,  after  an  interval  of  three 
years.  Montjoie  keeps  out  of  my  way,  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
I  have  never  set  eyes  on  him  since  I  passed  him  close  to  the 
Auteuil  station  in  July  1870.  From  Louie's  account,  he  is  now  a 
confirmed  drunkard,  and  can  hardly  ever  be  got  to  do  any  serious 
work.  Yet  she  brought  me  a  clay  study  of  their  little  girl  which 
he  threw  off  in  a  lucid  interval  two  or  three  months  ago,  surely 
as  good  as  anybody  or  anything,  astonishingly  delicate  and  true. 
Just  now,  apparently,  he  has  a  bad  fit  on,  and  but  for  my  allow- 
ance to  her  she  tells  me  they  would  be  all  but  destitute.  It  is 
remarkable  to  see  how  she  has  taken  possession  of  this  money 
and  with  what  shrewdness  she  manages  it.  I  suspect  her  of 
certain  small  Bourse  speculations — she  has  all  the  financial  slang 
on  the  tip  of  her  tongue — but  if  so,  they  succeed.  For  she  keeps 
herself  and  the  child,  scornfully  allows  him  so  much  for  his 
pocket  in  the  week,  and  even,  as  I  judge  from  the  consideration 
she  enjoys  in  the  church  she  frequents,  finds  money  for  her  own 
Catholic  purposes. 


454  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

'  Louie  a  fervent  Catholic  and  an  affectionate  mother  !  The 
mixture  of  old  and  new  in  her — the  fresh  habits  of  growth  im- 
posed on  the  original  plant — startle  me  at  every  turn.  Her 
Catholicism,  which  resolves  itself,  perhaps,  into  the  cult  of  a  par- 
ticular church  and  of  two  or  three  admirable  and  sagacious 
priests,  seems  to  me  one  long  intrigue  of  a  comparatively  harm- 
less kind.  It  provides  her  with  enemies,  allies,  plots,  battles, 
and  surprises.  It  ministers,  too,  to  her  love  of  colour  and  mag- 
nificence— a  love  which  implies  an  artistic  sense,  and  would  have 
been  utilised  young  if  she  had  belonged  to  an  artistic  family. 

'  But  just  as  I  am  adapting  myself  to  the  new  Louie  the  old 
reappears  !  She  was  talking  to  me  yesterday  of  her  exertions  at 
Easter  for  the  Easter  decorations,  and  describing  to  me  in  super- 
latives the  final  splendour  of  the  results,  and  the  compliments 
which  had  been  paid  her  by  one  or  two  of  the  clergy,  when  the 
name  of  a  lady  who  seems  to  have  been  connected  with  the  church 
longer  than  Louie  has,  and  is  evidently  her  rival  in  various 
matters  of  pious  service  and  charitable  organisation,  came  to  her 
lips.  Instantly  her  face  flamed,  and  the  denunciation  she 
launched  was  quite  in  the  old  Clough  End  and  Manchester  vein. 
I  was  to  understand  that  this  person  was  a  mean,  designing, 
worthless  creature,  a  hideous  object  besides,  and  "  made  up ;  " 
and  as  to  her  endeavours  to  ingratiate  herself  with  Father  this 
and  Father  that,  the  worst  motives  were  hinted  at. 

'  Another  little  incident  struck  me  more  painfully  still.  Her 
devotion  to  the  little  C6cile  is  astonishing.  She  is  miserable  when 
the  child  has  a  finger-ache,  and  seems  to  spend  most  of  her  time 
in  dressing  and  showing  her  off.  Yet  I  suspect  she  is  often  irri- 
table and  passionate  even  with  Ce"cile  ;  the  child  has  a  shrinking 
quiet  way  with  her  which  is  not  natural.  And  to-day,  when  she 
was  in  the  middle  of  cataloguing  Montjoie's  enormities,  and  I  was 
trying  to  restrain  her,  remembering  that  Cecile  was  looking  at  a 
book  on  the  other  side  of  the  room,  she  suddenly  called  to  the 
child  imperiously : 

'  "  C6cile  !  come  here  and  tell  your  uncle  what  your  father 
is  !" 

'  And,  to  my  horror,  the  little  creature  walked  across  to  us, 
and,  as  though  she  were  saying  a  lesson,  began  to  debiter  a  set 
speech  about  her  father's  crimes  and  her  mother's  wrongs,  con- 
taining the  wildest  abuse  of  her  father,  and  prompted  throughout 
by  the  excited  and  scarlet  Louie.  I  tried  to  stop  it ;  but  Louie 
only  pushed  me  away.  The  child  rose  to  her  part,  became  per- 
fectly white,  declaimed  with  a  shrill  fury,  indescribably  repulsive, 
and  at  the  end  sank  into  a  chair,  hardly  able  to  stand.  Then 
Louie  covered  her  with  kisses,  made  me  get  wine  for  her,  and 
held  her  cradled  in  her  arms  till  it  was  time  for  them  to  go. 

'On  the  way  downstairs,  when  Cecile  was  in  front  of  us,  I 
spoke  my  mind  about  this  performance  in  the  strongest  way. 
But  Louie  only  laughed  at  me.  "It  shall  be  quite  plain  that 
she  is  mine  and  not  his  !  I  don't  run  away  from  him  ;  I  keep 


CHAP.  I  MATURITY  455 

him  from  dying  on  the  streets  like  a  dog ;  but  his  child  and 
everyone  else  shall  know  what  he  is." 

'  It  is  a  tigress  passion.  Poor  little  child  ! — a  thin,  brown, 
large-eyed  creature,  with  rather  old,  affected  manners,  and  a 
small  clinging  hand.' 

'  July  <lth. — Father  Lenoir,  Louie's  director,  has  just  been  to 
call  upoji  me ;  Louie  insisted  on  my  going  to  a  festival  service  at 
St.  Eulalie  this  morning,  and  introduced  me  to  him — an  elderly, 
courteous,  noble-faced  priest  of  a  fine  type.  He  was  discreet,  of 
course,  and  made  me  feel  the  enormous  difference  that  exists 
between  an  outsider  and  a  member  of  the  one  flock.  But  I 
gathered  that  the  people  among  whom  she  is  now  thrown 
perfectly  understand  Louie.  By  means  of  the  subtle  and 
powerful  discipline  of  the  Church,  a  discipline  which  has 
absorbed  the  practical  wisdom  of  generations,  they  have  estab- 
lished a  hold  upon  her.  And  they  work  on  her  also  through  the 
child.  But  he  gave  me  to  understand  that  there  had  been  crises  ; 
that  the  opportunities  for  and  temptations  to  dissolute  living 
which  beset  Montjoie's  wife  were  endless  ;  and  it  was  a  marvel 
that  under  such  circumstances  a  being  so  wild  had  yet  kept 
straight. 

'  I  shook  him  warmly  by  the  hand  at  parting,  and  thanked 
him  from  my  heart.  He  somewhat  resented  my  thanks,  I 
thought.  They  imported,  perhaps,  a  personal  element  into  what 
he  regards  as  a  matter  of  pure  ecclesiastical  practice  and  duty.' 

'  December  25t7i,  1878. — Lucy  is  still  asleep  ;  the  rest  of  the 
house  is  just  stirring.  I  am  in  my  study  looking  out  on  the 
snowy  garden  and  the  frosted  trees,  which  are  as  yet  fair  and 
white,  though  in  a  few  hours  the  breath  of  Manchester  will  have 
polluted  them. 

'  Last  night  I  went  with  Lucy  and  Dora  to  the  midnight 
service  at  St.  Damian's.  It  pleased  them  that  I  went ;  and  I 
thought  the  service,  with  its  bells,  its  resonant  Adeste  fideles, 
and  its  white  flowers,  singularly  beautiful  and  touching.  And 
yet,  in  truth,  I  was  only  happy  in  it  because  I  was  so  far  removed 
from  it ;  because  the  legend  of  Bethlehem  and  the  mythology  of 
the  Trinity  are  no  longer  matters  of  particular  interest  or  debate 
with  me  ;  because  after  a  period  of  three- fourths  assent,  followed 
by  one  lasting  over  years  of  critical  analysis  and  controversial 
reading,  I  have  passed  of  late  into  a  conception  of  Christianity 
far  more  positive,  fruitful,  and  human  than  I  have  yet  held.  I 
would  fain  believe  it  the  Christianity  of  the  future.  But  the 
individual  must  beware  lest  he  wrap  his  personal  thinking  in 
phrases  too  large  for  it. 

'  Yet,  at  least,  one  may  say  that  it  is  a  conception  which  has 
been  gaining  more  and  more  hold  on  the  minds  of  those  who 
during  the  present  century  have  thought  most  deeply,  and 
laboured  most  disinterestedly  in  the  field  of  Christian  antiquity 
^who  have  sought  with  most  learning  and  with  fewest  hindrances 


456  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

from  circumstance  to  understand  Christianity,  whether  as  a  his- 
tory or  as  a  philosophy. 

'  I  have  read  much  German  during  the  past  year,  and  of  late 
a  book  reviewing  the  whole  course  of  religious  thought  in  Ger- 
many since  Schleiermacher,  with  a  mixture  of  exhaustive 
information  and  brilliant  style  most  unusual  in  a  German,  has 
absorbed  all  my  spare  hours.  Such  a  movement ! — such  a  wealth 
of  collective  labour  and  individual  genius  thrown  into  it — 
producing  offshoots  and  echoes  throughout  the  world,  trans- 
forming opinion  with  the  slow  inevitableuess  which  belongs  to 
all  science,  possessing  already  a  great  past  and  sure  of  a  great 
future. 

'  In  the  face  of  it,  our  orthodox  public,  the  contented  igno- 
rance of  our  clergy,  the  solemn  assurance  of  our  religious  press 
— what  curious  and  amazing  phenomena  !  Yet  probably  the 
two  worlds  have  their  analogues  in  every  religion  ;  and  what 
the  individual  has  to  learn  in  these  days  at  once  of  outward 
debate  and  of  unifying  social  aspiration,  is  "to  dissent  no 
longer  with  the  heat  of  a  narrow  antipathy,  but  with  the  quiet 
of  a  large  sympathy." ' 


CHAPTER  II 

A  FEW  days  after  Lord  Driffield's  warm  invitation  to  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  David  Grieve  to  spend  an  October  Saturday-to-Mouday  at 
Benet's  Park  had  been  accepted,  Lucy  was  sitting  in  the  Sep- 
tember dusk  putting  some  frills  into  Sandy's  Sunday  coat,  when 
the  door  opened  and  Dora  walked  in. 

'  You  do  look  done  ! '  said  Lucy,  as  she  held  up  her  cheek  to 
her  cousin's  salutation.  '  What  have  you  been  about  ? ' 

'They  kept  me  late  at  the  shop,  for  a  Saturday,'  said  Dora, 
with  a  sigh  of  fatigue,  '  and  since  then  I've  been  decorating. 
It's  the  Dedication  Festival  to-morrow.' 

'  Well,  the  festivals  don't  do  you  any  good,'  said  Lucy, 
emphatically  ;  '  they  always  tire  you  to  death.  When  you  do  get 
to  church,  I  don't  believe  you  can  enjoy  anything.  Why  don't 
you  let  other  people  have  a  turn  now,  after  all  these  years  ? 
There's  Miss  Barham,  and  Charlotte  Corfield,  and  Mrs.  Willan — 
they'd  all  do  a  great  deal  more  if  you  didn't  do  so  much.  I 
know  that.' 

Lucy's  cool  bright  eye  meant,  indeed,  that  she  had  heard 
some  remarks  made  of  late  with  regard  to  Dora's  position  at  St. 
Damian's  somewhat  unfavourable  to  her  cousin.  It  was  said 
that  she  was  jealous  of  co-operation  or  interference  on  the  part 
of  new  members  of  the  congregation  in  the  various  tasks  she  had 
been  accustomed  for  years  past  to  lay  upon  herself  in  connection 
with  tlie  church.  She  was  universally  held  to  be  extraordinarily 
good  ;  but  both  in  the  large  shop,  where  she  was  now  forewoman, 
and  at  St.  Damian's,  people  were  rather  afraid  of  her,  and 


CHAP.  II  MATURITY  457 

inclined  to  head  oppositions  to  her.  A  certain  severity  had 
grown  upon  her ;  she  was  more  self-confident,  though  it  was  a 
self-confidence  grounded  always  on  the  authority  of  the  Church  ; 
and  some  parts  of  the  nature  which  at  twenty  had  been  still  soft 
and  plastic  were  now  tending  to  rigidity. 

At  Lucy's  words  she  flushed  a  little. 

'  How  can  they  know  as  well  as  I  what  has  to  be  done?'  she 
said  with  energy.  'The  chancel  screen  is  beautiful,  Lucy — all 
yellow  fern  and  heather.  You  must  go  to-morrow,  and  take 
Sandy.' 

As  she  spoke  she  threw  off  her  waterproof  and  unloosed  the 
strings  of  her  black  bonnet.  Her  dark  serge  dress  with  its  white 
turn-down  collar  and  armlets — worn  these  last  for  the  sake  of 
her  embroidery  work — gave  her  a  dedicated  conventual  look. 
She  was  paler  than  of  old  ;  the  eyes,  though  beautiful  and  lumi- 
nous, were  no  longer  young,  and  lines  were  fast  deepening  in  the 
cheeks  and  chin,  with  their  round  childish  moulding.  What  had 
been  naivete  and  tremulous  sweetness  at  twenty,  was  now 
conscious  strength  and  patience.  The  countenance  had  been 
fashioned — and  fashioned  nobly — by  life  ;  but  the  tool  had  cut 
deep,  and  had  not  spared  the  first  grace  of  the  woman  in  develop- 
ing the  saint.  The  hands  especially,  the  long  thin  hands  defaced 
by  the  labour  of  years,  which  met  yours  in  a  grasp  so  full  of  pur- 
pose and  feeling,  told  a  story  and  symbolised  a  character. 

'David  won't  come,'  said  Lucy,  in  answer  to  Dora's  last 
remark  ;  '  he  hardly  ever  goes  anywhere  now  unless  he  hears  of 
some  one  going  to  preach  that  he  thinks  he'll  like.' 

'  No — I  know,'  said  Dora.  A  shade  came  over  her  face.  The 
attitude  of  David  Grieve  towards  religion  during  the  last  four  or 
five  years  represented  to  her  the  deep  disappointment  of  certain 
eager  hopes,  perhaps  one  might  almost  call  them  ambitions,  of 
her  missionary  youth.  The  disappointment  had  brought  a  cer- 
tain bitterness  with  it,  though  for  long  years  she  had  been  sister 
and  closest  friend  to  both  David  and  his  wife.  And  it  had  made 
her  doubly  sensitive  with  regard  to  Lucy,  whom  she  had  herself 
brought  over  from  the  Baptist  communion  to  the  Church,  and 
Sandy,  who  was  her  godchild. 

After  a  pause,  she  hesitatingly  brought  a  small  paper  book 
out  of  the  handbag  she  carried. 

'  I  brought  you  this,  Lucy.  Father  Eussell  sent  it  you.  He 
thinks  it  the  best  beginning  book  you  can  have.  He  always  gives 
it  in  the  parisli ;  and  if  the  mothers  will  only  use  it,  it  makes  it 
so  much  easier  to  teach  the  children  when  they  come  to  Sunday 
school.' 

Lucy  took  it  doubtfully.  It  was  called  '  The  Mother's  Cate- 
chism ; '  and,  opening  it,  she  saw  that  it  contained  a  series  of 
questions  and  answers,  as  between  a  mother  and  a  child. 

'  I  don't  think  Sandy  would  understand  it,'  she  said,  slowly, 
as  she  turned  it  over. 

'  Oh  yes,  he  would  ! '  said  Dora,  eagerly.     '  Why,  he's  nearly 


458  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

five,  Lucy.  It's  really  time  you  began  to  teach  him  something — 
unless  you  want  him  to  grow  up  a  little  heathen  ! ' 

The  last  words  had  a  note  of  indignation.  Lucy  took  no 
notice.  She  was  still  turning  over  the  book. 

'  And  I  don't  think  David  will  like  it,'  she  said,  still  more 
slowly  than  before. 

Dora  flushed. 

'  He  can't  want  to  keep  Sandy  from  being  taught  any  religion 
at  all  !  It  wouldn't  be  fair  to  you — or  to  the  child.  And  if  he 
won't  do  it,  if  he  isn't  certain  enough  about  what  he  thinks,  how 
can  he  mind  your  doing  it  ? ' 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  Lucy,  and  paused.  '  I  sometimes  think,' 
she  went  on,  with  more  energy,  '  that  David  will  be  quite  different 
some  day  from  what  he  has  been.  I'm  sure  he'll  want  to  teach 
Sandy.' 

'  He's  got  nothing  to  teach  him  ! '  cried  Dora.  Then  she  added 
in  another  voice — a  voice  of  wounded  feeling — '  If  he  was  to  be 
brought  up  an  atheist,  I  don't  think  David  ought  to  have  asked 
me  to  be  godmother.' 

'  He  shan't  be  brought  up  an  atheist,'  exclaimed  Lucy  startled. 
Then,  feeling  the  subject  too  much  for  her — for  it  provoked  in 
her  a  mingled  train  of  memories  which  she  had  not  words  enough 
to  express — she  turned  back  to  her  work,  leaving  the  book  on  the 
table  and  the  discussion  pending. 

'David's  dreadfully  late,'  she  said,  discontentedly,  looking  at 
the  clock. 

'  Where  is  he  ? ' 

'  Down  in  Ancoats,  I  expect.  He  told  me  he  had  a  committee 
there  to-day  after  work,  about  those  houses  he's  going  to  pull 
down.  He's  got  Mr.  Buller  and  Mr.  Haycraf  t — and ' — Lucy  named 
some  half-dozen  more  rich  and  well-known  men — '  to  help  him, 
and  they're  going  to  pull  down  one  of  the  worst  bits  of  James 
Street,  David  says,  and  build  up  new  houses  for  working  people. 
He's  wild  about  it.  Oh,  I  know  we'll  have  no  money  at  all  left 
soon  ! '  cried  Lucy  indignantly,  with  a  shrug  of  her  small  shoul- 
ders. 

Dora  smiled  at  what  seemed  to  her  a  childish  petulance. 

'  Why,  I'm  sure  you've  got  everything  very  nice,  Lucy,  and  all 
you  want.' 

'  No,  indeed,  I  haven't  got  all  I  want,'  said  Lucy,  looking  up 
and  frowning  ;  '  I  never  shall,  neither.  I  want  David  to  be — to 
be — like  everybody  else.  He  might  be  a  rich  man  to-morrow  if 
he  wouldn't  have  such  ideas.  He  doesn't  think  a  bit  about  me 
and  Sandy.  I  told  you  what  would  happen  when  he  made  that 
division  between  the  bookselling  and  the  printing,  and  took  up 
with  those  ideas  about  the  men.  I  knew  he'd  come  not  to  care 
about  the  bookselling.  And  I  was  perfectly  right !  There's  that 
printing-office  getting  bigger  and  bigger,  and  crowds  of  men  wait- 
ing to  be  taken  on,  and  such  a  lot  of  business  doing  as  never  was. 
And  are  we  a  bit  the  richer  ?  Not  a  penny — or  hardly.  It's  sicken- 


CHAP,  n  MATUEITT  459 

ing  to  hear  the  way  people  talk  about  him  I  Why,  they  say  the 
last  election  wouldn't  have  been  nearly  so  good  for  the  Liberals 
all  about  the  North  if  it  hadn't  been  for  the  things  he's  always 
publishing  and  the  two  papers  he  started  last  year.  He  might  be 
a  member  of  Parliament  any  day,  and  he  wouldn't  be  a  member 
of  Parliament — not  ho  !  He  told  me  he  didn't  care  twopence 
about  it.  No,  he  doesn't  care  for  anything  but  just  taking  our 
money  and  giving  it  to  other  people — there  !  You  may  say  what 
you  like,  but  it's  true.' 

The  wilful  energy  with  which  Lucy  spoke  the  last  words 
transformed  the  small  face — brought  out  the  harder  lines  on  it. 

'  Well,  I  never  know  what  it  is  that  you  want  exactly,'  said 
Dora.  '  I  don't  think  you  do  yourself.' 

Lucy  stitched  silently,  her  thin  red  lips  pressed  together.  She 
knew  perfectly  well  what  she  wanted,  only  she  was  ashamed  to 
confess  it  to  the  religious  and  ascetic  Dora.  Her  ideal  of  living 
was  filled  in  with  images  and  desires  abundantly  derived  from 
Manchester  life,  where  every  day  she  saw  people  grow  rich 
rapidly,  and  rise  as  a  matter  of  course  into  that  upper  region  of 
gentility,  carriages,  servants,  wines,  and  grouse-moors,  whither, 
ever  since  it  had  become  plain  to  her  that  David  could,  if  he 
chose,  easily  place  her  there,  it  had  been  her  constant  craving  to 
go.  Other  people  came  to  be  gentlefolks  and  lord  it  over  the 
land — why  not  they  ?  It  made  her  mad,  as  she  had  said  to  Dora, 
to  see  their  money — their  very  own  money — chucked  away  to 
other  people,  and  they  getting  no  good  of  it,  and  remaining  mere 
working  booksellers  and  printers  as  before. 

'  Why  don't  you  go  and  help  him  ? '  said  Dora  suddenly. 
'  Perhaps  if  you  were  to  go  right  in  and  see  what  he's  doing,  you 
wouldn't  mind  it  so  much.  You  might  get  to  like  it.  He  doesn't 
want  to  keep  everything  to  himself — he  wants  to  share  with  those 
that  need.  If  there  were  a  good  many  others  like  that,  perhaps 
there'd  be  fewer  awful  things  happening  down  at  Ancoats.' 

A  sigh  rose  to  her  lips.     Her  beautiful  eyes  grew  sad. 

'  Well,  I  did  try  once  or  twice,'  said  Lucy,  pettishly,  'but  I've 
always  told  you  that  sort  of  thing  isn't  in  my  line.  Of  course  I 
understand  about  giving  away,  and  all  that.  But  he'll  hardly 
let  you  give  away  at  all !  He  says  it's  pauperising  the  people. 
And  the  things  he  wants  me  to  do — I  never  seem  to  do  'em  right, 
and  I  can't  get  to  care  a  bit  about  them.' 

The  tone  in  her  voice  betrayed  a  past  experience  which  had 
been  in  some  way  trying  and  discouraging  to  a  fine  natural  vanity. 

Dora  did  not  answer.  She  played  absently  with  the  little 
book  on  the  table. 

4  Oh  !  but  he's  going  to  let  us  accept  -the  invitation  to  Benet's 
Park — I  didn't  tell  you  that,'  said  Lucy  suddenly,  her  face 
clearing. 

Dora  was  startled. 

'  Why,  I  thought  you  told  me  he  wouldn't  go  ?' 

1  So  I  did.     But — well,  I  let  out  ! '  said  Lucy,  colouring,  '  and 


460  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IT 

he's  changed  his  mind.  But  I'm  rather  in  a  fright,  Dora,  though 
I  don't  tell  him.  Think  of  that  big  house  and  all  those  servants 
— I'm  more  frightened  of  them  than  of  anybody  !  I  say,  do  you 
think  my  new  dresses  '11  do  ?  You'll  come  up  and  look  at  them, 
won't  you  ?  Not  that  you're  much  use  about  dresses.' 

Dora  was  profoundly  interested  and  somewhat  bewildered. 
That  her  little  cousin  Lucy,  Purcell's  daughter  and  Daddy's  niece, 
should  be  going  to  stay  as  an  invited  guest  in  a  castle,  with  an 
earl  and  countess,  was  very  amazing.  Was  it  because  the  Radi- 
cals had  got  the  upper  hand  so  much  at  the  election  ?  She  could 
not  understand  it,  but  some  of  her  old  girlishness,  her  old  interest 
in  small  womanish  trifles,  came  back  upon  her,  and  she  discussed 
the  details  of  what  Lucy  might  expect  so  eagerly  that  Lucy  was 
quite  delighted  with  her. 

In  the  middle  of  their  talk  a  step  was  heard  in  the  hall. 

'  Ah,  there  he  is  ! '  said  Lucy  ;  '  now  we'll  ring  for  supper,  and 
I'll  go  and  get  ready.' 

Dora  sat  alone  for  a  few  minutes,  and  then  David  came  in. 

'  Ah  !  Dora,  this  is  nice.  Lucy  says  you  will  stay  to  supper. 
We  get  so  busy,  you  and  I,  we  see  each  other  much  too  seldom.' 

He  spoke  in  his  most  cordial,  brotherly  tone,  and,  standing  on 
the  rug  with  his  back  to  the  fire,  he  looked  down  upon  her  with 
evident  pleasure. 

As  for  her,  though  the  throb  of  her  young  passion  had  been 
so  soon  and  so  sternly  silenced,  it  was  still  happiness  to  her  to  be 
in  the  same  room  with  David  Grieve,  and  any  unusual  kindness 
from  him,  or  a  long  talk  with  him,  would  often  send  her  back  to 
her  little  room  in  Ancoats  stored  with  a  cheerful  warmth  of  soul 
which  helped  her  through  many  days.  For  of  late  years  she  had 
been  more  liable  than  of  old  to  fits  of  fretting — fretting  about  her 
father,  about  her  own  sins  and  other  people's,  about  the  little 
worries  of  her  Sunday-school  class,  or  the  little  rubs  of  church 
work.  The  contact  with  a  nature  so  large  and  stimulating, 
though  sometimes  it  angered  and  depressed  her  through  the 
influence  of  religious  considerations,  was  yet  on  the  whole  of 
infinite  service  to  her,  of  more  service  than  she  knew. 

'  Have  you  forgiven  me  for  upsetting  Sandy  ? '  she  asked  him, 
with  a  smile. 

'I'm  on  the  way  to  it.  I  left  him  just  now  prancing  about 
Lucy's  bed,  and  making  an  abominable  noise.  She  told  him  to 
be  quiet,  whereupon  he  indignantly  informed  her  that  he  was  "a 
dwagon  hunting  wats."  So  I  imagine  he  hasn't  had  "  the  wrong 
dinner  "  to-day.' 

They  both  laughed. 

'  And  you  have  been  in  Ancoats?' 

'Yes,'  said  David,  tossing  back  his  black  hair  with  an  ani- 
mated gesture,  and  thrusting  his  hands  into  his  pockets.  '  Yes 
— we  are  getting  on.  We  have  got  the  whole  of  that  worst 
James  Street  court  into  our  hands.  We  shall  begin  pulling  down 
directly,  and  the  plans  for  the  new  buildings  are  almost  ready. 


CHAP,  ii  MATURITY  461 

And  we  have  told  all  the  old  tenants  that  they  shall  have  a  prior 
claim  on  the  new  rooms  if  they  choose  to  come  back.  Some  will ; 
for  a  good  many  others  of  course  we  shall  be  too  respectable, 
though  I  am  set  on  keeping  the  plans  as  simple  and  the  rents  as 
low  as  possible.' 

Dora  sat  looking  at  him  with  somewhat  perplexed  eyes. 

Her  Christianity  had  been  originally  of  the  older  High  Church 
type,  wherein  the  ideal  of  personal  holiness  had  not  yet  been  fused 
with  the  ideal  of  social  service.  The  care  of  the  poor  and  needy 
was,  of  course,  indispensable  to  the  Christian  life ;  but  she 
thought  first  and  most  of  bringing  them  to  church,  and  to  the 
blessing  and  efficacy  of  the  sacraments ;  then  of  giving  them 
money  when  they  were  sick,  and  assuring  to  them  the  Church's 
benediction  in  dying.  The  modern  fuss  about  overcrowded 
houses  and  insanitary  conditions  —  the  attack  on  bricks  and 
mortar — the  preaching  of  temperance,  education,  thrift — these 
things  often  seemed  to  Christian  people  of  Dora's  type  and  day, 
if  they  spoke  their  true  minds,  to  be  tinged  with  atheism  and 
secularism.  They  were  jealous  all  the  time  for  something  better. 
They  instinctively  felt  that  the  preeminence  of  certain  ideas, 
most  dear  to  them,  was  threatened  by  this  absorption  in  the 
detail  of  the  mere  human  life. 

Something  of  this  it  was  that  passed  vaguely  through  Dora's 
mind  as  she  sat  listening  to  David's  further  talk  about  his 
Ancoats  scheme  ;  and  at  last,  influenced,  perhaps,  by  a  half- 
conscious  realisation  of  her  demur — it  was  only  that — he  let  it 
drop. 

'  What  is  that  book  ? '  he  said,  his  quick  eye  detecting  the 
little  paper-covered  volume  on  Lucy's  table.  And,  stepping 
forward,  he  took  it  up. 

Dora  unexpectedly  found  her  voice  a  little  husky  as  she 
replied,  and  had  to  clear  her  throat. 

'  It  is  a  book  I  brought  for  Lucy.  Sandy  is  a  baptized  Chris- 
tian, David.  Lucy  wants  to  teach  him,  so  I  brought  her  this 
little  Catechism,  which  Father  Russell  recommends.' 

David  turned  the  book  over  in  silence.  He  read  a  passage 
concerning  the  Virgin  Mary ;  another,  in  which  the  child  asked 
about  the  number  and  names  of  the  Archangels,  gave  a  detailed 
answer ;  another  in  which  Dissenters  were  handled  with  an 
acrimony  which  contrasted  with  a  general  tone  of  sweetness  and 
unction. 

David  laid  it  down  on  the  mantelpiece. 

'No,  Dora,  I  can't  have  Sandy  taught  out  of  this.' 

He  spoke  with  dignity,  but  with  an  endeavour  to  make  his 
tone  as  gentle  as  possible. 

Dora  was  silent  a  moment ;  then  she  broke  out : 

'  What  will  you  teach  him,  then  ?  Is  he  to  be  a  Christian  at 
all?' 

'  In  a  sense,  yes  ;  with  all  my  heart,  yes  !  so  far,  at  least,  as 
his  father  has  any  share  in  the  matter.' 


462  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  nr 

'  And  is  his  mother  to  have  no  voice  ? '  Dora  went  on  with 
growing  bitterness  and  hurry.  '  And  as  for  me — why  did  you 
let  me  be  his  godmother  ?  I  take  it  seriously,  and  I  may  do 
nothing.' 

'  You  may  do  everything,'  he  said,  sitting  down  beside  her, 
'  except  teach  him  extreme  matter  of  this  kind,  which,  because  I 
am  what  I  am,  will  make  a  critic  of  the  child  before  his  time.  I 
am  not  a  bigot,  Dora !  I  shall  not  interfere  with  Lucy ;  she 
would  not  teach  him  in  this  way.  She  talks  to  him  ;  and  she 
instinctively  feels  for  me,  and  what  she  says  comes  softly  and 
vaguely  to  him.  It  is  different  with  things  like  this,  set  down  in 
black  and  white,  and  to  be  learnt  by  heart.  You  must  remember 
that  half  of  it  seems  to  me  false  history,  and  some  of  it  false 
morals.' 

He  looked  at  her  anxiously.  The  jarring  note  was  hateful  to 
him.  He  had  always  taken  for  granted  that  Lucy  was  under 
Dora's  influence  religiously — had  perhaps  made  it  an  excuse  for 
a  gradual  withdrawal  of  his  inmost  mind  from  his  wife,  which 
in  reality  rested  on  quite  other  reasons.  But  his  heart  was  full 
of  dreams  about  his  son.  He  could  not  let  Dora  have  her  way 
there. 

'  Oh,  how  different  it  is,'  cried  Dora,  in  a  low,  intense  voice, 
twining  her  hands  together,  '  from  what  I  once  thought  ! ' 

'  No  ! '  he  said,  vehemently,  '  there  is  no  real  difference  be- 
tween you  and  me — there  never  can  be  ;  teach  Sandy  to  be  good 
and  to  love  you  !  That's  what  I  should  like  ! ' 

His  eyes  were  full  of  emotion,  but  he  smiled.  Dora,  however, 
could  not  respond.  The  inner  tension  was  too  strong.  She 
turned  away,  and  began  fidgeting  with  Lucy's  workbag. 

Then  a  small  voice  and  a  preparatory  turmoil  were  heard 
outside. 

'  Auntie  Dora  !  Auntie  Dora  ! '  cried  Sandy,  rushing  in  with 
a  hop,  skip,  and  a  jump,  and  flourishing  a  picture-book,  '  look 
at  zese  pickers  !  Dat's  a  buffalo — most  es^rwnary  animal,  the 
buffalo  ! ' 

*  Come  here,  rascal ! '  called  his  father,  and  the  child  ran  up 
to  him.  David  knelt  to  look  at  the  picture,  but  the  little  fellow 
suddenly  dropped  it  and  his  interest  in  it,  in  a  way  habitual  to 
him,  twined  one  arm  round  his  father's  neck,  laid  his  cheek 
against  David's,  crossed  one  foot  over  the  other,  and,  thumb  in 
mouth,  looked  Dora  up  and  down  with  his  large,  observant  eyes. 

Dora,  melted,  wooed  him  to  come  to  her.  Her  adoration  of 
him  was  almost  on  a  level  with  David's.  Sandy  took  a  minute 
to  think  whether  he  should  leave  his  father.  Then  he  climbed 
her  knee,  and  patronised  her  on  the  subject  of  buffaloes  and 
giraffes — '  I  tan't  'splain  everything  to  you,  Auntie  Dora ;  you'll 
know  when  you're  older' — till  Lucy  and  supper  came  together. 
And  supper  was  brightened  both  by  Lucy's  secret  content  in  the 
prospect  of  the  Benet's  Park  visit  and  by  the  child's  humours. 
When  Dora  said  good  night  to  her  host,  their  manner  to  each 


CHAP.  II  MATURITY  463 

other  had  its  usual  fraternal  quality.    Nevertheless,  the  woman 
carried  away  with  her  both  resentment  and  distress. 

About  a  fortnight  later  David  and  Lucy  started  one  fine 
October  afternoon  for  Benet's  Park.  The  cab  was  crowded  with 
Lucy's  luggage,  and  David,  in  new  clothes  to  please  his  wife,  felt 
himself,  as  the  cab  door  closed  upon  them,  a  trapped  and  mise- 
rable man. 

What  had  possessed  Lord  Driffield  to  send  that  unlucky  note  ? 
For  Lord  Driffield  himself  David  had  a  grateful  and  real  affection. 
Ever  since  that  whimsical  scholar  had  first  taken  kindly  notice 
of  the  boy-tradesman,  there  had  been  a  growing  friendship 
between  the  two  ;  and  of  late  years  Lord  Driffield's  interest  in 
David's  development  and  career  had  become  particularly  warm 
and  cordial.  He  had  himself  largely  contributed  to  the  subtler 
sides  of  that  development,  had  helped  to  refine  the  ambitions 
and  raise  the  standards  of  the  growing  intellect ;  his  advice, 
owing  to  his  lifelong  commei'ce  with  and  large  possession  of 
books,  had  often  been  of  great  practical  use  to  the  young  man ; 
his  library  had  for  years  been  at  David's  service,  both  for  refe- 
rence and  borrowing  ;  and  he  had  supplied  his  favourite  with 
customers  and  introductions  in  a  large  percentage  of  the  Uni- 
versity towns  both  at  home  and  abroad,  a  social  milieu  where 
Lord  Driffield  was  more  at  home  and  better  appreciated  than  in 
any  other.  The  small  delicately  featured  man,  whose  distin- 
guished face,  with  its  abundant  waves  of  silky  hair — once  ruddy, 
now  a  goldenish  white — presided  so  oddly  over  an  incorrigible 
shabbiness  of  dress,  had  become  a  familiar  figure  in  David's  life. 
Their  friendship,  of  course,  was  limited  to  a  very  definite  region 
of  thought  and  relation  ;  but  they  corresponded  freely,  when 
they  were  apart,  on  matters  of  literature,  bibliography,  some- 
times of  politics ;  and  no  sooner  was  the  Earl  at  Benet's  Park 
than  David  had  constant  calls  from  him  in  his  office  at  the  back 
of  the  now  spacious  and  important  establishment  in  Prince's 
Street. 

But  Lord  Driffield,  as  we  know,  had  managed  his  mind  better 
than  his  marriage,  and  his  savoir  vivre  was  no  match  for  his 
learning.  He  bore  his  spouse  and  his  country-gentleman  life 
patiently  enough  in  general ;  but  every  now  and  then  he  fell 
into  exasperation.  His  wife  flooded  him  too  persistently,  per- 
haps, with  cousins  and  grandees  of  the  duller  sort,  whose  ideas 
seemed  to  him  as  raw  as  their  rent-rolls  were  large — till  he 
rebelled.  Then  he  would  have  his  friends  ;  selecting  them  more 
or  less  at  random  from  up  and  down  the  ranks  of  literature  and 
science,  till  Lady  Driffield  raised  her  eyebrows,  invited  a  certain 
number  of  her  own  set  to  keep  her  in  countenance,  and  made  up 
her  mind  to  endure.  At  the  end  of  the  ordeal  Lord  Driffield 
generally  made  the  rueful  reflection  that  it  had  not  gone  off  welL 
But  he  felt  the  better  and  digested  the  better  for  the  self-asser- 
tion of  it,  and  it  was  periodically  renewed. 


464  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

David  and  Lucy  Grieve  had  been  asked  in  some  such  moment 
of  domestic  annoyance.  The  Earl  had  seen  '  Grieve's  wife '  twice, 
and  hastily  remembered  that  she  seemed  'a  presentable  little 
person.'  He  was  constitutionally  indifferent  to  and  contemptuous 
of  women.  But  he  imagined  that  it  would  please  David  to  bring 
his  wife  ;  and  he  was  perhaps  tolerably  certain,  since  no  one,  be 
he  rake  or  savant,  possesses  an  historical  name  and  domain 
without  knowing  it,  that  it  would  please  the  bookseller's  wife  to 
be  invited. 

David  suspected  a  good  deal  of  this,  for  he  knew  his  man 
pretty  well.  As  he  sat  opposite  to  Lucy  in  the  railway  carriage 
— first-class,  since  she  felt  it  incongruous  to  go  in  anything  else 
— he  recalled  certain  luncheons  at  Benet's  Park,  when  he  had 
been  doing  a  bit  of  work  in  the  library  during  the  family  sojourn. 
Certainly  Lucy  did  not  realise  at  all  how  formidable  these  aristo- 
cratic women  could  be ! 

And  his  pride — at  bottom  the  workman's  pride — was  made 
uncomfortable  by  his  wife's  newness.  New  hat,  new  dress,  new 
gloves  !  Himself  too !  It  annoyed  him  that  Lady  Driffield 
should  be  so  plainly  informed  that  great  pains  had  been  taken 
for  her.  He  felt  irritable  and  out  of  gear.  Being  neither  self- 
conscious  nor  awkward,  he  became  both  for  the  moment,  out  of 
sympathy  with  Lucy. 

Yet  Lucy  was  supremely  happy  as  they  sped  along  to  Staly- 
bridge.  Suppose  her  father  heard  of  it !  She  could  no  doubt 
insure  his  knowing  ;  but  it  might  set  his  back  up  still  more, 
make  him  more  mad  than  before  with  her  and  David.  Eight 
years  and  more  since  he  had  spoken  to  her,  and  the  other  day, 
when  he  had  seen  her  coming  in  Deansgate,  he  had  crossed  to 
the  other  side  of  the  street ! — Were  those  sleeves  of  her  evening 
dress  quite  right  ?  They  were  not  caught  down,  she  thought, 
quite  in  the  right  place.  No  doubt  there  would  be  time  before 
dinner  to  put  in  a  stitch.  And  she  did  hope  that  pleat  from  the 
neck  would  look  all  right.  It  was  peculiar,  but  Miss  Helby  had 
assured  her  it  was  much  worn.  Would  there  be  many  titled 
people,  she  wondered,  and  would  all  the  ladies  wear  diamonds  ? 
She  thought  disconsolately  of  the  little  black  enamelled  locket 
and  the  Roman  pearls,  which  were  all  the  adornments  she  pos- 
sessed. 

After  a  short  journey  they  alighted  at  their  station  as  the 
dusk  was  beginning. 

'  Are  you  for  Benet's  Park,  m'm  ? '  said  the  porter  to  Lucy. 
'  All  right ! — the  carriage  is  just  outside.' 

Lucy  held  herself  an  inch  taller,  and  waited  for  David  to 
come  back  from  the  van  with  their  two  new  portmanteaus. 

Meanwhile  she  noticed  two  other  groups  of  people,  whose 
bags  and  rugs  were  being  appropriated  by  a  couple  of  powdered 
footmen — a  husband  and  wife,  and  a  tall  military-looking  man 
accompanied  by  two  ladies.  The  two  ladies  belonged  to  the 
height  of  fashion — of  that  Lucy  was  certain,  as  she  stole  an  in- 


CHAP,  ii  MATURITY  465 

timidated  glance  at  the  cut  of  their  tailor-made  gowns  and  the 
costliness  of  the  fur  cloak  which  one  of  them  carried.  As  for  the 
other  lady,  could  she  also  be  on  her  way  to  Benet's  Park — with 
this  uncouth  figure,  this  mannish  height  and  breadth,  this  com- 
plete lack  of  waist,  these  large  arms  and  hands,  and  the  over- 
ample  garments  and  hat,  of  green  cashmere  slashed  with  yellow, 
in  which  she  was  marvellously  arrayed  ?  Yet  she  seemed  entirely 
at  her  ease,  which  was  more  than  Lucy  was,  and  her  little  dark 
husband  was  already  talking  with  the  tall  ladies. 

David,  having  captured  the  luggage,  was  accosted  by  one  of 
the  footmen,  who  then  came  up  to  Lucy  and  took  her  bag.  She 
and  David  followed  in  his  wake,  and  found  themselves  mingling 
with  the  other  five  persons,  who  were  clearly  to  be  their  fellow- 
guests. 

As  they  stood  outside  the  station  door,  the  elder  of  the  two 
ladies  turned  and  ran  a  scrutinising  eye  over  Lucy  and  the  person, 
in  sage  green  following  her  ;  then  she  said  rapidly  to  the  gentle- 
man with  her  : 

'  Now,  remember  Mathilde  can't  go  outside,  and  I  prefer  to 
have  her  with  me.' 

'  "Well  I  suppose  there'll  be  room  in  the  omnibus,'  said  he, 
shortly.  '  I  shall  go  in  the  dog-cart  and  get  a  smoke.  By  George! 
those  are  good  horses  of  Driffield's  !  And  they  are  not  the  pair  I 
sent  him  over  from  Ireland  in  the  autumn  either.' 

He  went  down  the  steps,  patted  and  examined  the  horses,  and 
threw  a  word  or  two  to  the  coachman.  Lucy,  palpitating  with 
excitement  and  alarm,  felt  a  corresponding  awe  of  the  person 
who  could  venture  such  familiarities  even  with  the  servants  and 
live-stock  of  Benet's  Park. 

The  servant  let  down  the  steps  of  the  smart  omnibus  with  its 
impatient  steeds.  The  two  tall  ladies  got  in. 

'  Mathilde  ! '  called  the  elder. 

A  little  maid,  dressed  in  black,  and  carrying  a  large  dressing- 
bag,  hurried  down  the  steps  before  the  remaining  guests,  and 
was  helped  in  by  the  footman.  The  lady  in  sage  green  smiled  at 
her  husband — a  sleepy,  humorous  smile.  Then  she  stepped  in, 
the  footman  touching  his  hat  to  her  as  though  he  knew  her. 

'  Any  maid,  m'm  ? '  said  the  man  to  Lucy,  as  she  was  follow- 
ing. 

'  No — oh  no  ! '  said  Lucy,  stumbling  in.  '  Give  me  my  bag, 
please.' 

The  man  gave  it  to  her,  and  timidly  looking  round  her  she 
settled  herself  in  the  smallest  space  and  the  remotest  corner  she 
could. 

When  the  carriage  rolled  off,  the  lady  in  green  looked  out  of 
window  for  a  while  at  the  dark  flying  fields  and  woods,  over 
which  the  stars  were  beginning  to  come  out. 

4  Are  you  a  stranger  in  these  parts,  or  do  you  know  Benet's 
Park  already  ? '  she  said  presently  to  Lucy,  who  was  next  her,  in 
a  pleasant,  nonchalant  way. 


466  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

'  I  have  never  been  here  before, '  said  Lucy,  dreading'somehow 
the  sound  of  her  own  voice  ;  '  but  my  husband  is  well  acquainted 
with  the  family.' 

She  was  pleased  with  her  own  phrase,  and  began  to  recover 
herself.  The  lady  said  no  more,  however,  but  leant  back  and 
apparently  went  to  sleep.  The  tall  ladies  presently  did  the  same. 
Lucy's  depression  returned  as  the  silence  lasted.  She  supposed 
that  it  was  aristocratic  not  to  talk  to  people  till  you  had  been 
introduced  to  them.  She  hoped  she  would  be  introduced  when 
they  reached  Benet's  Park.  Otherwise  it  would  be  awkward 
staying  in  the  same  house. 

Then  she  fell  into  a  dream,  imagining  herself  with  a  maid — 
ordering  her  about  deliciously — saying  to  the  handsome  footman, 
'  My  maid  has  my  wraps ' — and  then  with  the  next  jolt  of  the 
carriage  waking  up  to  the  humdrum  and  unwelcome  reality. 
And  David  might  be  as  rich  as  anybody  !  Familiar  resentments 
and  cravings  stirred  in  her,  and  her  drive  became  even  less  of  a 
pleasure  than  before.  As  for  David,  he  spent  the  whole  of  it  in 
lively  conversation  with  the  small  dark  man,  beside  the  window. 

The  carriage  paused  a  moment.  Then  great  gates  were  swung 
back  and  in  they  sped,  the  horses  stepping  out  smartly  now  that 
they  were  within  scent  of  home.  There  was  a  darkness  as  of 
thick  and  lofty  trees,  then  dim  opening  stretches  of  park  ;  lastly 
a  huge  house,  mirage-like  in  the  distance,  with  rows  of  lighted 
windows,  a  crackling  of  crisp  gravel,  the  sound  of  the  drag,  and 
a  pomp  of  opening  doors. 

'  Shall  I  take  yonr  bag,  Madam  ? '  said  a  magnificent  person, 
bending  towards  Lucy,  as,  clinging  to  her  possession,  she  followed 
the  lady  in  green  into  the  outer  hall. 

'  Oh  no,  thank  you  1  at  least,  shall  I  find  it  again  ? '  said  the 
frightened  Lucy,  looking  in  front  of  her  at  the  vast  hall,  with  its 
tall  lamps  and  statues  and  innumerable  doors. 

'  It  shall  be  sent  upstairs  for  you,  Madam,'  said  the  magnifi- 
cent person  gravely,  and,  as  Lucy  thought,  severely. 

She  submitted,  and  looked  round  for  David.  Oh,  where 
was  he  ? 

'  This  is  a  fine  hall,  isn't  it  ? '  said  the  lady  in  green  beside 
her.  '  Bad  period — but  good  of  its  kind.  "What  on  earth  do 
they  spoil  it  for  with  those  shocking  modern  portraits  ? ' 

Such  assurance — combined  with  such  garments — in  such  a 
house — it  was  nothing  short  of  a  miracle  I 


CHAPTER   HI 

'Now,  Lavinia,  do  be  kind  to  young  Mrs.  Grieve.  She  is  evi- 
dently as  shy  as  she  can  be.' 

So  spoke  Lord  Driffield,  with  some  annoyance  in  his  voice,  as 
he  looked  into  his  wife's  room  after  dressing  for  dinner. 

'  I  suppose  she  can  amuse  herself  like  other  people,'  said  Lady 


CHAP,  in  MATURITY  467 

Driffield.  She  was  standing  by  the  fire  warming  a  satin-shoed 
foot.  '  I  have  told  Williams  to  leave  all  the  houses  open  to- 
morrow. And  there's  church,  and  the  pictures.  The  Danbys 
and  the  rest  of  us  are  going  over  to  Lady  Herbart's  for  tea. ' 

A  cloud  came  over  Lord  Driffield's  face.  He  made  some 
impatient  exclamation,  which  was  muffled  by  his  white  beard  and 
moustache,  and  walked  back  to  his  own  room. 

Meanwhile  Lucy,  in  another  corridor  of  the  great  house,  was 
standing  before  a  long  glass,  looking  herself  up  and  down  in  a 
tumult  of  excitement  and  anxiety. 

She  had  just  passed  through  a  formidable  hour  !  In  a  great 
gallery,  with  polished  floor,  and  hung  with  portraits  of  ancestral 
Driffields,  the  party  from  the  station  had  found  Lady  Driffield, 
with  five  or  six  other  people,  who  seemed  to  be  already  staying  in 
the  house.  Though  the  butler  had  preceded  them,  no  names  but 
those  of  Lady  Venetia  Danby  and  Miss  Danby  had  been  an- 
nounced ;  and  when  Lady  Driffield,  a  tall  effective-looking  woman 
with  a  cold  eye  and  an  expressionless  voice,  said  a  short  '  How  do 
you  do  ? '  and  extended  a  few  fingers  to  David  and  his  wife,  no 
names  were  mentioned,  and  Lucy  felt  a  sudden  depressing  con- 
viction that  no  names  were  needed.  To  the  mistress  of  the  house 
they  were  just  two  nonentities,  to  whom  she  was  to  give  bed  and 
board  for  two  nights  to  gratify  her  husband's  whims ;  whether 
their  insignificant  name  happened  to  be  Grieve,  or  Tompkins,  or 
Johnson,  mattered  nothing. 

So  Lucy  had  sat  down  in  a  subdued  state  of  mind,  and  was 
handed  tea  by  a  servant,  while  the  Danbys — Colonel  Danby,  after 
his  smoke  in  the  dog-cart,  following  close  on  the  heels  of  his  wife 
and  daughter — mixed  with  the  group  round  the  tea-table,  and 
much  chatter,  combined  with  a  free  use  of  Christian  names, 
liberal  petting  of  Lady  Driffield's  Pomeranian,  and  an  account  by 
Miss  Danby  of  an  accident  to  herself  in  the  hunting-field,  filled 
up  a  half -hour  which  to  one  person,  at  least,  had  the  qualities  of 
a  nightmare.  David  was  talking  to  the  lady  in  green — to  whom, 
by  the  way,  Lady  Driffield  had  been  distinctly  civil.  Once  he 
came  over  to  relieve  Lucy  from  a  waterproof  which  was  on  her 
knee, '  and  to  get  her  some  bread  and  butter.  But  otherwise  no 
one  took  any  notice  of  her,  and  she  fell  into  a  nervous  terror  lest 
she  should  upset  her  cup,  or  drop  her  teaspoon,  or  scatter  her 
crumbs  on  the  floor. 

Then  at  last  Lord  Driffield,  who  had  been  absent  on  some 
country  business,  which  his  soul  loathed,  had  come  in,  and  with 
the  cordiality,  nay,  affection  of  his  greeting  to  David,  and  the 
kindness  of  his  notice  of  herself,  little  Lucy's  spirits  had  risen  at 
a  bound.  She  felt  instinctively  that  a  protector  had  arrived,  and 
even  the  formidable  procession  upstairs  in  the  wake  of  Lady 
Driffield,  when  the  moment  at  last  arrived  for  showing  the  guests 
to  their  rooms,  had  passed  off  safely,  Lucy  throwing  out  an 
agitated  '  Thank  you ! '  when  Lady  Driffield  had  even  gone  so  far 
as  to  open  a  door  with  her  own  bediamonded  hand,  which  had 


468  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

Mrs.  Grieve's  plebeian  appellations  written  in  full  upon  the  card 
attached  to  it. 

And  now  ?  Was  the  dress  nice  ?  Would  it  do  ?  Unluckily, 
since  Lucy's  rise  in  the  social  scale  which  had  marked  the  last 
few  years,  the  sureness  of  her  original  taste  in  dress  had  some- 
what deserted  her.  Her  natural  instinct  was  for  trimness  and 
closeness  ;  but  of  late  her  ideals  had  been  somewhat  confused  by 
a  new  and  more  important  diessmaker  with  'aesthetic'  notions, 
who  had  been  recommended  to  her  by  the  good-natured  and 
artistic  wife  of  one  of  the  College  professors.  Under  the  guidance 
of  this  expert,  she  had  chosen  a  '  Watteau  sacque '  from  a  fashion- 
plate,  not  quite  daring,  little  tradesman's  daughter  as  she  felt 
herself  at  bottom,  to  venture  on  the  undisguised  low  neck  and 
short  sleeves  of  ordinary  fashionable  dress. 

She  said  fretfully  to  herself  that  she  could  see  nothing  in  this 
vast  room.  More  and  more  candles  did  she  light  with  a  trembling 
hand,  trusting  devoutly  that  no  one  would  come  in  and  discover 
her  with  such  an  extravagant  illumination.  Then  she  tried  each 
of  the  two  long  glasses  of  the  room  in  turn.  Her  courage 
mounted.  It  was  pretty.  The  terra-cotta  shade  was  exquisite, 
and  no  one  could  tell  that  the  satin  was  cotton-backed.  The 
flowing  sleeves  and  the  pleat  from  the  shoulder  gave  her  dignity, 
she  was  certain  ;  and  she  had  done  her  hair  beautifully.  She 
wished  David  would  come  in  and  see  !  But  his  room  was  across 
a  little  landing,  which,  indeed,  seemed  to  be  all  their  own,  for  it 
was  shut  off  from  the  passage  they  had  entered  from  by  an  outer 
door.  There  was,  however,  more  than  one  door  opening  on  to 
the  landing,  and  Lucy  was  so  much  afraid  of  her  surroundings  that 
she  preferred  to  wait  till  he  came. 

Meanwhile — what  a  bedroom !  "Why,  it  was  more  gorgeous 
than  any  drawing-room  she  had  ever  entered.  Every  article  of 
furniture  was  of  old  marqueterie,  adapted  to  modern  uses,  the 
appointments  of  the  writing-table  were  of  solid  silver — Lucy  had 
eagerly  ascertained  the  fact  by  looking  at  the  '  marks ' — and  as 
for  the  towels,  she  simply  could  not  have  imagined  that  such 
things  were  made  !  Her  little  soul  was  in  a  whirl  of  envy,  admi- 
ration, pride.  What  tales  she  would  have  to  tell  Dora  when  they 
got  home  ! 

'  Are  you  ready  ? '  said  David,  opening  the  door.  '  I  believe  I 
hear  people  going  downstairs. ' 

He  came  in  arrayed  in  the  new  dress  suit  which  became  him 
as  well  as  anything  else  ;  for  he  had  a  natural  dignity  which 
absorbed  and  surmounted  any  novelty  of  circumstance  or  setting, 
and  was  purely  a  matter  of  character,  depending  upon  a  mind 
familiar  with  large  interests  and  launched  towards  ideal  aims. 
He  might'  be  silent,  melancholy,  impracticable,  but  never  meanly 
self-conscious.  It  had  rarely  occurred  to  anyone  to  pity  or  con- 
descend to  David  Grieve. 

Lucy  looked  at  him  with  uneasy  pride.  Then  she  glanced  back 
at  her  own  reflection  in  the  glass. 


OHAP.  in  MATURITY  469 

'  What  do  you  think  of  it  ? '  she  asked  him,  eagerly. 

'  Magnificent ! '  said  David,  with  all  the  sincerity  of  ignorance 
— wishing,  moreover,  to  make  his  wife  pleased  with  herself.  '  But 
oughtn't  you  to  have  gloves  instead  of  those  things  ? '  • 

He  pointed  doubtfully  to  the  mittens  on  her  arms. 

'  Oh,  David,  don't  say  that ! '  cried  Lucy,  in  despair.  '  Miss 
Helby  said  these  were  the  right  things.  It's  to  be  like  an  old 
picture,  don't  you  understand  ?  And  I  haven't  got  any  gloves  but 
those  I  came  in.  Oh,  don't  be  so  disagreeable  ! ' 

She  looked  ready  to  cry.  Poor  David  hastened  to  declare  that 
Miss  Helby  must  be  right,  and  that  it  was  all  very  nice.  Then 
they  blew  out  the  candles  and  ventured  forth. 

'  Lord  Driffield  says  that  Canon  Aylwin  is  coming,'  said  David, 
examining  some  Hollar  engravings  on  the  wall  of  the  staircase  as 
they  descended,  '  and  the  Dean  of  Bradford,  who  is  staying  with 
him.  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  Canon  Aylwin.' 

His  face  took  a  pleased  meditative  look.  He  was  thinking  of 
Canon  Aylvvin's  last  volume  of  essays — of  their  fine  scholarship, 
their  delicate,  unique  qualities  of  style.  As  for  Lucy,  it  seemed 
to  her  that  all  the  principalities  and  powers  of  this  world  were 
somehow  arraying  themselves  against  her  in  that  terrible  drawing- 
room  they  were  so  soon  to  enter.  She  set  her  teeth,  held  up  her 
head,  and  on  they  went. 

Presently  they  found  themselves  approaching  a  glass  door, 
which  opened  into  the  central  hall.  Beyond  it  was  a  crowd  of 
figures  and  a  buzz  of  talk,  and  at  the  door  stood  a  tall  person  in 
black  with  white  gloves,  holding  a  silver  tray,  from  which  he 
presented  David  with  a  button-hole.  Then,  with  a  manner  at 
once  suave  and  impersonal,  he  held  open  the  door,  and  the 
husband  and  wife  passed  through. 

'  Ah,  my  dear  Grieve,'  said  Lord  Driffield,  laying  his  hand  on 
David's  shoulder,  '  come  here  and  be  introduced  to  Canon  Aylwin. 
I  am  delighted  to  have  caught  him  for  you.' 

So  David  was  swept  away  to  the  other  side  of  the  room,  and 
Lucy  was  left  forlorn  and  stranded.  It  seemed  to  her  an  immense 
party  ;  there  were  at  least  eight  or  ten  fresh  faces  beyond  those 
she  had  seen  already.  And  just  as  she  was  looking  for  a  seat 
into  which  she  might  slip  and  hide  herself,  Lady  Venetia  Danby, 
who  was  standing  near,  playing  with  a  huge  feather  fan  and 
talking  to  a  handsome  young  man,  turned  round  by  chance  and, 
seeing  the  figure  in  the  bright-coloured  '  Watteausacgwe,'  involun- 
tarily put  up  her  eyeglass  to  look  at  it.  Instantly  Lucy,  conscious 
of  the  eyeglass,  and  looking  hurriedly  round  on  the  people  near, 
was  certain  that  the  pleat  from  the  shoulder  and  the  mittens  were 
irretrievably  wrong  and  conspicuous,  and  that  she  had  betrayed 
herself  at  once  by  her  dress  as  an  ignoramus  and  an  outsider. 
Worst  of  all,  the  lady  in  green  was  in  a  sacque  too  ! — a  shape- 
less yellow  thing  of  the  most  untutored  and  detestable  make. 
Mittens  also  !  drawn  laboriously  over  the  hands  and  arms  of  an 
Amazon.  Lucy  glanced  at  Miss  Danby  beside  her,  then  at  a 


470  THE  HISTORY   OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

beautiful  woman  in  pale  pink  across  the  room — at  their  slim 
waists,  the  careless  aplomb  and  grace  with  which  the  costly  stuffs 
and  gleaming  jewels  were  worn,  and  the  white  necks  displayed — 
and  sank  into  a  chair  trembling  and  miserable.  That  the  only 
person  to  keep  her  in  countenance  should  be  that  particular 
person — that  they  two  should  thus  fall  into  a  class  together,  by 
themselves,  cut  off  from  all  the  rest — it  was  too  much  !  Then,  by 
a  quick  reaction,  some  of  her  natural  obstinacy  returned  upon 
her.  She  held  herself  erect,  and  looked  steadily  round  the  room. 

'Mr.  Edwardes — Mrs.  Grieve,'  said  Lady  Driffield's  impassive 
voice,  speaking,  as  it  seemed  to  Lucy,  from  a  great  height,  as  the 
tall  figure  swept  past  her  to  introductions  more  important. 

A  young  man  bowed  to  Lucy,  looked  at  her  for  a  moment, 
then,  pulling  his  fair  moustache,  turned  away  to  speak  to  Miss 
Danby,  who,  in  the  absence  of  more  stimulating  suitors  for  her 
smiles,  was  graciously  pleased  to  bestow  a  few  of  them  on  Lord 
Driffield's  new  agent. 

4  Whom  are  we  waiting  for  ? '  said  Miss  Danby,  looking  round 
her,  and  slightly  glancing  at  Lucy. 

'Only  the  Dean,  I  believe,'  said  Mr.  Edwardes,  with  a  smile. 
'  I  never  knew  Dean  Manley  less  than  half  an  hour  late  in  this 
house.' 

A  cold  shiver  ran  through  Lucy.  Then  they — she  and  David 
— had  been  all  but  the  last,  had  all  but  kept  the  whole  of  this 
portentous  gathering  waiting  for  them. 

In  the  midst  of  her  new  tremor  the  glass  doors  were  again 
thrown  open,  and  in  walked  the  Dean — a  short,  plain  man,  with 
a  mirthful  eye,  a  substantial  person,  and  legs  which  became  his 
knee-breeches. 

'  Thirty -five  minutes,  Dean  ! '  said  the  handsome  youth,  who 
had  been  talking  to  Lady  Venetia,  as  he  held  up  his  watch. 

'  It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  Reggie,'  -said  the  Dean,  laying  his 
hand  on  the  lad's  shoulder,  '  that  your  watch  has  gained  per- 
sistently ever  since  I  was  first  acquainted  with  you.  Ah,  well, 
keep  it  ahead,  my  boy.  A  diplomatist  must  be  egged  on  some- 
how.' 

1 1  thought  the  one  condition  of  success  in  that  trade  was  the 
patience  to  do  nothing,'  said  a  charming  voice.  '  Don't  interfere 
with  Reggie's  prospects,  Dean.' 

4  Has  he  got  any  ? '  said  the  Dean,  maliciously.  '  My  dear 
Mrs.  Wellesdon,  you  are  a  "  sight  for  sair  een."  ' 

And  he  pressed  the  new-comer's  hand  between  both  his  own, 
surveying  her  the  while  with  a  fatherly  affection  and  admiration. 

Lucy  looked  up,  a  curious  envy  at  her  heart.  She  saw  the 
beautiful  lady  in  pink,  who  had  come  across  the  room  to  greet 
the  Dean.  Was  she  beautiful  ?  Lucy  hurriedly  asked  herself. 
Perhaps  not,  in  point  of  feature,  but  she  held  her  head  so  nobly, 
her  colour  was  so  subtle  and  lovely,  her  eye  so  speaking,  and  her 
mouth  so  sweet,  she  carried  about  with  her  a  preeminence  so 
natural  and  human,  that  beauty  was  in  truth  the  only  word  that 


CHAP,  in  MATURITY  471 

fitted  her.  Now,  as  the  Dean  passed  on  from  her  to  some  one 
else,  she  glanced  down  at  the  little  figure  in  terra-cotta  satin, 
and,  with  a  kindly  diffident  expression,  she  sat  down  and  began 
to  talk  to  Lucy.  Marcia  Wellesdon  was  a  sorceress,  and  could 
win  whatever  hearts  she  pleased.  In  a  few  moments  she  so 
soothed  Lucy's  nervousness  that  she  even  beguiled  from  her  some 
bright  and  natural  talk  about  the  journey  and  the  house,  and 
Lucy  was  rapidly  beginning  to  be  happy,  when  the  signal  for 
dinner  was  given,  and  a  general  move  began. 

At  dinner  Mr.  Edwardes  bestowed  his  conversation  for  a 
decent  space  of  time — say,  during  the  soup  and  fish — upon  Mrs. 
Grieve.  Lucy,  once  more  ill  at  ease,  tried  eagerly  to  propitiate 
him  by  asking  innumerable  questions  about  the  family,  and  the 
pictures,  and  the  estate,  it  being  at  once  evident  that  he  had  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  all  three.  But  as  the  family,  the  pictures, 
and  the  estate  were  always  with  him,  so  to  speak,  made,  indeed, 
a  burden  which  his  shoulders  had  some  difficulty  in  carrying,  the 
attractions  of  this  vein  of  talk  palled  on  the  young  agent — who 
was  himself  a  scion  of  good  family,  with  his  own  social  ambitions 
— before  long.  He  decided  that  Mrs.  Grieve  was  pure  middle- 
class,  not  at  all  accustomed  to  dine  in  halls  of  pride,  and  much 
agitated  by  her  surroundings.  The  type  did  not  interest  him. 
She  seemed  to  be  asking  him  to  help  her  out  of  the  mire,  and  as 
one  does  not  go  into  society  to  be  benevolent  but  to  be  amused, 
by  the  time  the  first  entree  was  well  in  he  had  edged  his  chair 
round,  and  was  in  animated  talk  with  pretty  little  Lady  Alice 
Findlay,  the  daughter  of  the  hook-nosed  Lord-Lieutenant  of  the 
county,  who  was  seated  at  Lady  Driffield's  right  hand.  Lucy 
noticed  the  immediate  difference  in  tone,  the  easy  variety  of 
topic,  compared  with  her  own  sense  of  difficulty,  and  her  heart 
swelled  with  bitterness. 

Then,  to  her  horror,  she  saw  that,  from  inattention  and  ignor- 
ance of  what  might  be  expected,  she  had  allowed  the  servants  to  fill 
every  single  wineglass  of  the  four  standing  at  her  right — positively 
every  one.  Sherry,  claret,  hock,  champagne — she  was  provided 
with  them  all.  She  cast  a  hurried  and  guilty  eye  round  the  table. 
Save  for  champagne,  each  lady's  glasses  stood  immaculately 
empty,  and  when  Lucy  came  back  to  her  own  collection  she  could 
bear  it  no  longer. 

'  Mr.  Edwardes  ! '  she  said  hastily,  leaning  over  towards  him. 

The  young  man  turned  abruptly.  'Yes,'  he  said,  looking  at 
her  in  some  surprise. 

'  Oh,  Mr.  Edwardes  !  can  you  ask  some  one  to  take  these  wine- 
glasses away  ?  I  didn't  want  any,  and  it  looks  so — so — dreadful ! ' 

The  agent  thought  that  Mrs.  Grieve  was  going  to  cry.  As  for 
himself,  his  eye  twinkled,  and  he  had  great  difficulty  to  restrain 
a  burst  of  laughter.  He  called  a  footman  near,  and  Lucy  was 
soon  relieved  of  her  fourfold  incubus. 

'  Oh,  but  you  must  save  the  champagne  ! '  he  said,  and,  bend- 
ing his  chair  backward,  he  was  about  to  recall  the  man,  when 
Lucy  stopped  him. 


472  THE   HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  Don't — don't,  please,  Mr.  Edwardes  ! '  she  said,  in  an  agony. 

He  lifted  his  eyebrows  good-humouredly,  and  desisted.  Then 
he  asked  her  if  he  should  give  her  some  water,  and  when  that 
was  done  the  episode  apparently  seemed  to  him  closed,  for  he 
turned  away  again,  and  looked  out  for  fresh  opportunities  with 
Lady  Alice.  Lucy,  meanwhile,  was  left  feeling  herself  even  more 
unsuccessful  and  more  out  of  place  than  before,  and  ready  to 
sink  with  vexation.  And  how  well  David  was  getting  on  !  There 
he  was,  between  Mrs.  Shepton  and  the  beautiful  lady  in  pink, 
and  he  and  Mrs.  Wellesdon  were  deep  in  conversation,  his  dark 
head  bent  gravely  towards  her,  his  face  melting  every  now  and 
then  into  laughter  or  crossed  by  some  vivid  light  of  assent  and 
pleasure.  Lucy's  look  travelled  over  the  table,  the  orchids  with 
which  it  was  covered,  the  lights,  the  plate,  then  to  the  Vandykes 
behind  the  guests,  and  the  great  mirrors  in  between — came  back 
to  the  table,  and  passed  from  face  to  face,  till  again  it  rested 
upon  David.  The  conviction  of  her  husband's  handsome  looks 
and  natural  adequacy  to  this  or  any  world,  with  which  her  sur- 
vey ended,  brought  with  it  a  strange  mixture  of  feelings — half 
pleasure,  half  bitterness. 

4  Are  you  from  this  part  of  the  world,  may  I  ask  ? '  said  a  voice 
at  her  elbow. 

She  turned,  and  saw  Colonel  Danby,  who  was  tired  of  devot- 
ing himself  to  the  wife  of  a  neighbouring  Master  of  Hounds — a 
lady  with  white  hair  and  white  eyelashes,  always  apparently  on 
the  point  of  sleep,  even  at  the  liveliest  dinner-table — and  was 
now  inclined  to  see  what  this  little  provincial  might  be  made  of. 

'  Oh,  yes  !  we  are  from  Manchester,'  said  Lucy,  straightening 
herself,  and  preparing  to  do  her  best.  '  We  live  in  Manchester — 
at  least,  of  course,  not  in  Manchester.  No  one  could  do  that.' 

It  was  but  three  years  since  she  had  ceased  to  do  it,  but  new 
habits  of  speech  grow  apace  when  it  is  a  matter  of  social  prestige. 
She  was  terribly  afraid  lest  anybody  should  now  think  of  them  as 
persons  who  lived  over  their  shop. 

'Ah! — suppose  not,' said  Colonel  Danby,  carelessly.  'Land 
in  Manchester,  they  tell  me  now,  is  almost  as  costly  as  it  is  in 
London.' 

Whereat  Lucy  went  off  at  score,  delighted  to  make  Manchester 
important  and  to  produce  her  own  information.  She  had  an 
aptitude  for  business  gossip,  and  she  chatted  eagerly  about  the 
price  that  So-and-So  had  paid  for  their  new  warehouses,  and  the 
sum  which  report  said  the  Corporation  was  going  to  spend  on  a 
fine  new  street. 

'  And  of  oourse  many  people  don't  like  it.  There's  always 
grumbling  about  the  rates.  But  they  should  have  public  spirit, 
shouldn't  they  ?  Are  you  acquainted  with  Manchester  ? '  she 
added,  more  timidly. 

All  this  time  Colonel  Danby  had  been  listening  with  half  an 
ear,  and  was  much  more  assiduously  trying  to  make  up  his  mind 
whether  the  little  bourgeoise  was  pretty  at  all.  She  had  rather  a 


CHAP,  in  MATURITY  473 

fine  pair  of  eyes — he  supposed  she  had  made  that  dress  in  her 
own  back  parlour. 

'  Manchester  ?  I — oh,  I  have  spent  a  night  at  the  Queen's 
Hotel  now  and  then,'  said  the  Colonel,  with  a  yawn.  '  What  do 
you  do  there  ?  Do  you  amuse  yourself — eh  ? ' 

His  smile  was  not  pleasant.  He  had  a  florid  face,  with  bad 
lines  round  the  eyes  and  a  tyrannous  mouth.  His  physical  make 
had  been  magnificent,  but  reckless  living  had  brought  on  the 
penalties  of  gout  before  their  time. 

Lucy  was  intimidated  by  the  mixture  of  familiarity  and 
patronage  in  the  tone. 

'  Oh,  yes,'  she  said,  hurriedly  ;  '  we  get  all  the  best  companies 
from  the  London  theatres,  and  there  are  very  good  concerts. ' 

'  And  that  kind  of  thing  amuses  you  ? '  said  the  Colonel,  still 
examining  her  with  the  same  cool,  fixed  glance. 

'  I  like  music  very  much,'  stammered  Lucy,  and  then  fell 
silent. 

'  Do  you  know  all  these  people  here  ? ' 

'  Oh,  dear,  no  ! '  she  cried,  feeling  the  very  question  male- 
volent. '  I  don't  know  any  of  them.  My  husband  wishes  to  lead 
a  very  retired  life,'  she  added,  bridling  a  little,  by  way  of  undoing 
the  effect  of  her  admissions. 

'  And  you  don't  wish  it  ? ' 

The  disagreeable  eyes  smiled  again. 

'  Oh  !  I  don't  know,'  said  Lucy. 

Colonel  Danby  reflected  that  whatever  his  companion  might 
be,  she  was  not  amusing. 

'  Have  you  noticed  the  gentleman  opposite  ? '  he  inquired, 
stifling  another  yawn. 

Lucy  timidly  looked  across. 

'  It  is — it  is  the  Dean  of  Bradford,  isn't  it  ? ' 

'  Yes  ;  it's  a  comfort,  isn't  it,  when  one  can  know  a  man  by 
his  clothes  !  Do  you  see  what  his  deanship  has  had  for  dinner  ? ' 

Lucy  ventured  another  look,  and  saw  that  the  Dean  had  in 
front  of  him  a  plate  of  biscuits  and  a^lass  of  water,  and  that  the 
condition  of  his  knives  and  forks  showed  him  to  have  hitherto 
subsisted  on  this  fare  alone. 

'  Is  he  so  very — so  very  religious  ? '  she  said,  wondering. 

'  A  saint  in  gaiters  ?  Well,  I  don't  know.  Probably  the  saint 
has  dined  at  one.  Do  you  feel  any  inclination  to  be  a  saint,  Mrs. 
Grieve  ? ' 

Lucy  could  neither  meet  nor  parry  the  banter  of  his  look.  She 
only  blushed. 

'I  wouldn't  attempt  it,  if  I  were  you,'  he  said,  laughing. 
'  Those  pretty  brown  eyes  weren't  meant  for  it. ' 

Lucy  suddenly  felt  as  though  she  had  been  struck,  so  free  and 
cavalier  was  the  tone.  Her  cheek  took  a  deeper  crimson,  and  she 
looked  helplessly  across  at  David. 

'  Little  fool  1 '  thought  the  Colonel.  '  But  she  has  certainly 
some  points.' 


474  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

At  that  moment  Lady  Driffield  gave  the  signal,  and,  with  a 
half -ironical  bow  to  his  companion,  Colonel  Danby  rose,  picked 
np  her  handkerchief  for  her,  and  drew  his  chair  aside  to  let  her 
pass. 

Presently  Lucy  was  sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  magnificent  green 
drawing-room,  to  which  Lady  Driffield  had  carelessly  led  the  way. 
In  her  vague  humiliation  and  unhappiness,  she  craved  that  some 
one  should  come  and  talk  to  her  and  be  kind  to  her — even  Mrs. 
Shepton,  who  had  addressed  a  few  pleasant  remarks  to  her  on  their 
way  from  the  dining-room.  But  Mrs.  Shepton  was  absorbed  by  Lady 
Driffield,  who  sat  down  beside  her,  and  took  some  trouble  to  talk. 
4  Then  why  not  to  me  ? '  was  Lucy's  instinctive  thought.  For  she 
realised  that  she  and  Mrs.  Shepton  were  socially  not  far  apart. 
Yet  Lady  Driffield  had  so  far  addressed  about  six  words  to  Mrs. 
David  Grieve,  while  she  was  now  bending  her  aristocratic  neck  to 
listen  to  Mrs.  Shepton,  who  was  talking  entirely  at  her  ease,  with 
her  arm  round  the  back  of  a  neighbouring  chair,  and,  as  it 
seemed  to  Lucy,  about  politics. 

The  rest  of  the  ladies,  with  the  exception  of  the  Master  of 
Hounds'  wife,  who  sat  in  a  chair  by  the  fire  and  dozed,  were  all 
either  old  friends  or  relations,  and  they  gathered  in  a  group  on  the 
Aubusson  rug  in  front  of  the  fire,  chatting  merrily  about  their 
common  kindred,  the  visits  they  had  paid,  or  were  to  pay,  the 
fate  of  their  fathers  and  brothers  in  the  recent  election,  '  the 
Duke's '  terrible  embarrassments,  or  '  Sir  Alfred's '  yachting 
party  to  Norway,  of  which  little  Lady  Alice  gave  a  sparkling 
account. 

In  her  chair  on  the  outskirts  of  the  talkers,  Lucy  sat  painfully 
turning  over  the  leaves  of  a  costly  collection  of  autographs,  which 
lay  on  the  table  near  her.  Sometimes  she  tried  to  interest  herself 
in  the  splendid  room,  with  its  hangings  of  pale  flowered  silk,  its 
glass  cases,  full  of  historical  relics,  miniatures,  and  precious 
things,  representing  the  long  and  brilliant  past  of  the  house  of 
Driffield,  the  Sir  Joshuas  and  Eomneys,  which  repeated  on  the 
walls  the  grace  and  physical  perfection  of  some  of  the  living 
women  below.  But  she  had  too  few  associations  with  anything 
she  saw  to  care  for  it,  and,  indeed,  her  mind  was  too  wholly  given 
to  her  own  vague,  but  overmastering  sense  of  isolation  and 
defeat.  If  it  were  only  bedtime  ! 

Mrs.  "Wellesdon  glanced  at  the  solitary  figure  from  time  to 
time,  but  Lady  Alice  had  her  arm  round  '  Marcia's '  waist,  and 
kept  close  hold  of  her  favourite  cousin.  At  last,  however,  Mrs. 
Wellesdon  drew  the  young  girl  with  her  to  the  side  of  Lucy's 
chair,  and,  sitting  down  by  the  stranger,  they  both  tried  to  enter- 
tain her,  and  to  show  her  some  of  the  things  in  the  room. 

Lucy  brightened  up  at  once,  and  thought  them  both  the  most 
beautiful  and  fascinating  of  human  beings.  But  her  good  fortune 
was  soon  over,  alas  !  for  the  gentlemen  came  in,  and  the  social 
elements  were  once  more  redistributed.  '  Reggie,'  the  young 
diplomatist,  freshly  returned  from  Berlin,  laid  hold  of  his  sister 


CHAP,  in  MATURITY  475 

Marcia,  and  his  cousin  Lady  Alice,  and  carried  them  off  for  a 
family  gossip  into  a  corner  of  the  room,  whence  peals  of  young 
laughter  were  soon  to  be  heard  from  him  and  Lady  Alice. 

Mr.  Edwardes  and  Colonel  Danby  passed  Mrs.  Grieve  by,  in 
quest  of  metal  more  attractive  ;  Lord  Driffield,  the  Dean,  Canon 
Aylwin,  and  David  stood  absorbed  in  conversation  ;  while  Lady 
Driffield  transferred  her  attentions  to  Mr.  Shepton,  and  the 
husband  of  the  lady  by  the  fire  walked  up  to  her,  insisting,  some- 
what crossly,  on  waking  her.  Lucy  was  once  more  left  alone. 

'  Lavinia,  haven't  we  done  our  duty  to  this  apartment  ? '  cried 
Lord  Driffield,  impatiently  ;  '  it  always  puts  me  on  stilts.  The 
library  is  ten  times  more  comfortable.  I  propose  an  adjournment. ' 

Lady  Driffield  shrugged  her  shoulders,  and  assented.  So  the 
whole  party,  Lucy  timidly  attaching  herself  to  Mrs.  Shepton, 
moved  slowly  through  a  long  suite  of  beautiful  rooms,  till  they 
reached  the  great  cedar-fitted  library,  which  was  Lord  Driffield's 
paradise.  Here  was  every  book  to  be  desired  of  the  scholar  to 
make  him  wise,  and  every  chair  to  make  him  comfortable.  Lord 
Driffield  went  to  one  of  the  bookcases,  and  took  a  vellum-bound 
book,  found  a  passage  in  it,  and  showed  it  to  David  Grieve. 
Canon  Aylwin  and  the  Dean  pressed  in  to  look,  and  they  all  fell 
back  into  the  recess  of  a  great  oriel,  talking  earnestly. 

The  others  passed  on  into  a  conservatory  beyond  the  library, 
where  was  a  billard-table,  and  many  nooks  for  conversation  amid 
the  cunning  labyrinths  of  flowers. 

Lucy  sank  into  a  cane  chair,  close  to  a  towering  mass  of  arum 
lilies,  and  looked  back  into  the  library.  Nobody  in  the  conserva- 
tory had  any  thought  for  her.  They  were  absorbed  in  each  other, 
and  a  merry  game  of  pyramids  had  been  already  organised.  So 
Lucy  watched  her  husband  wistfully. 

What  a  beautiful  face  was  that  of  Canon  Aylwin,  with  whom 
he  was  talking  !  She  could  not  take  her  eyes  from  its  long,  thin 
outlines,  the  apostolic  white  hair,  the  eager  eyes  and  quivering 
mouth,  contrasting  with  the  patient  courtesy  of  manner.  Yet  in 
her  present  soreness  and  heat,  the  saintly  charm  of  the  old  man's 
figure  did  somehow  but  depress  her  the  more. 

A  little  after  ten  it  became  evident  that  nothing  could  keep 
the  lady  with  the  white  eyelashes  out  of  bed  any  longer,  so  the 
billiard-room  party  broke  up,  and,  with  a  few  gentlemen  in 
attendance,  the  ladies  streamed  into  the  hall,  and  possessed  them- 
selves of  bedroom  candlesticks.  The  great  house  seemed  to  be 
alive  with  talk  and  laughter  as  they  strolled  upstairs,  the  girls 
making  dressing-gown  appointments  in  each  other's  rooms  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  later. 

When  Lucy  reached  her  own  door  she  stopped  awkwardly. 
Lady  Driffield  walked  on,  talking  to  Marcia  VVellesdon.  But 
Marcia  looked  back  : 

'  Good  night,  Mrs.  Grieve. ' 

She  returned,  and  pressed  Lucy's  hand  kindly.  '  I  am  afraid 
you  must  be  tired,'  she  said  ;  '  you  look  so.' 


478  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

Laxly  Driffield  also  shook  hands,  but,  with  constitutional 
gauchei'ie,  she  did  not  second  Mrs.  Wellesdon's  remark ;  she  stood 
by  silent  and  stiff. 

'  Oh,  no,  thank  you,'  said  Lucy,  hurriedly,  '  I  am  quite  well.' 

"When  she  had  disappeared,  the  other  two  walked  on. 

« What  a  stupid  little  thing ! '  said  Lady  Driffield.  '  The 
husband  may  be  interesting— Driffield  says  he  is — but  I  defy 
anybody  to  get  anything  out  of  the  wife.' 

It  occurred  to  Marcia  that  nobody  had  been  very  anxious  to 
make  the  attempt.  But  she  only 'said  aloud  : 

'  I'm  sure  she  is  very  shy.  What  a  pity  she  wears  that  kind  of 
dress  !  She  might  be  quite  pretty  in  something  else.' 

Meanwhile  Lucy,  after  shutting  the  outer  door  of  their  little 
suite  behind  her,  was  overtaken  as  she  opened  that  leading  to  her 
own  room  by  a  sudden  gust  of  wind  coming  from  a  back  staircase 
emerging  on  to  their  private  passage,  which  she  had  not  noticed 
before.  The  candle  was  blown  out,  and  she  entered  the  room  in 
complete  darkness.  She  groped  for  the  matches,  and  found  the 
little  stand  ;  but  there  were  none  there.  She  must  have  used  the 
last  in  the  making  of  her  great  illumination  before  dinner.  After 
much  hesitation,  she  at  last  summoned  up  courage  to  ring  the 
bell,  groping  her  way  to  it  by  the  help  of  the  light  in  the  passage. 

For  a  long  time  no  one  came.  Lucy,  standing  near  her  own 
door,  seemed  to  hear  two  sounds — the  angry  beating  of  her  own 
heart,  and  a  murmur  of  far-off  talk  and  jollity,  conveyed  to  her 
up  the  mysterious  staircase,  which  apparently  led  to  some  of  the 
servants'  quarters. 

Fully  five  minutes  passed  ;  then  steps  were  heard  approaching, 
and  a  housemaid  appeared.  Lucy  timidly  asked  for  fresh 
matches.  The  girl  said  '  Yes,  ma'am, '  in  an  off-hand  way, 
looked  at  Lucy  with  a  somewhat  hostile  eye,  and  vanished. 

The  minutes  passed,  but  no  matches  were  forthcoming.  The 
whirlpool  of  the  lower  regions,  where  the  fun  was  growing 
uproarious,  seemed  to  have  engulfed  the  messenger.  At  last 
Lucy  was  fain  to  undress  by  the  help  of  a  glimmer  of  light  from 
her  door  left  ajar,  and  after  many  stumbles  and  fumblings  at 
last  crept,  tired  and  wounded,  into  bed.  This  finale  seemed  to 
her  of  a  piece  with  all  the  rest. 

As  she  lay  there  in  the  dark,  incident  after  incident  of  her 
luckless  evening  coming  back  upon  her,  her  heart  grew  hungry 
for  David.  Nay,  her  craving  for  him  mounted  to  jealousy  and 
passion.  After  all,  though  he  did  get  on  so  much  better  in  grand 
houses  than  she  did,  though  they  were  all  kind  to  him  and  de- 
spised her,  he  was  7iers,  her  very  own,  and  no  one  should  take  him 
from  her.  Beautiful  Mrs.  Wellesdon  might  talk  to  him  and  make 
friends  with  him,  but  he  did  not  belong  to  any  of  them,  but  to 
her,  Lucy.  She  pined  for  the  sound  of  his  step — thought  of 
throwing  herself  into  his  arms,  and  seeking  consolation  there  for 
the  pains  of  an  habitual  self-importance  crushed  beyond  bearing. 

But  when  that  step  was  actually  heard  ouside,  her  mind  veered 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  477 

in  an  instant.  She  had  made  him  come  ;  he  would  think  she  had 
disgraced  him  ;  he  had  probably  noticed  nothing,  for  a  certain 
absent-mindedness  in  society  had  grown  upon  him  of  late  years. 
No,  she  would  hold  her  peace. 

So  when  David,  stepping  softly  and  shading  his  candle,  came 
in,  and  called  '  Lucy '  under  his  breath  to  see  whether  she  might 
be  awake,  Lucy  pretended  to  be  sound  asleep.  He  waited  a 
minute,  and  then  went  out  to  change  his  coat  and  go  down  to  the 
smoking-room. 

Poor  little  Lucy  !  As  she  lay  there  in  the  dark,  the  tears 
dropping  slowly  on  her  embroidered  pillow,  the  issue  of  all  her 
mortification  was  a  new  and  troubled  consciousness  about  her 
husband.  Why  this  difference  between  them  ?  How  was  it  that 
he  commanded  from  all  who  knew  him  either  a  warm  sympathy  or 
an  involuntary  respect,  while  she — 

She  had  gathered  from  some  scraps  of  the  talk  round  him 
which  had  reached  her  that  it  was  just  those  sides  of  his  life — • 
those  quixotic  ideal  sides — which  were  an  offence  and  annoyance 
to  her  that  touched  other  people's  imagination,  opened  their 
hearts.  And  she  had  worried  and  teased  him  all  these  years  ! 
Not  since  the  beginning.  For,  looking  back,  she  could  well 
remember  the  days  when  it  was  still  an  intoxication  that  he 
should  have  married  her,  when  she  was  at  once  in  awe  of  him 
and  foolishly,  proudly,  happy.  But  there  had  come  a  year  when 
David's  profits  from  his  business  had  amounted  to  over  2,OOOZ., 
and  when,  thanks  to  a  large  loan  pressed  upon  him  by  his 
Unitarian  landlord,  Mr.  Doyle,  he  had  taken  the  new  premises  in 
Prince's  Street.  And  from  that  moment  Lucy's  horizon  had 
changed,  her  ambitions  had  hardened  and  narrowed  ;  she  had 
begun  to  be  impatient  with  her  husband,  first,  that  he  could  not 
make  her  rich  faster,  then,  after  their  Tantalus  gleam  of  wealth, 
that  he  would  put  mysterious  and  provoking  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  their  getting  rich  at  all. 

She  meant  to  keep  awake — to  wait  for  him.  But  she  began  to 
think  of  Sandy.  He  would  be  glad  to  see  his  '  mummy  '  again  ! 
In  fancy  she  pressed  his  cheek  against  her  own  burning  one.  He 
and  David  were  still  alive — still  hers — it  was  all  right  somehow. 
Consolation  began  to  steal  upon  her,  and  in  ten  minutes  she  was 
asleep. 

CHAPTER  IV 

WHEN  David  came  in  later,  he  took  advantage  of  Lucy's  sleep  to 
sit  up  awhile  in  his  own  room.  He  was  excited,  and  any  strong 
impression,  in  the  practical  loneliness  of  his  deepest  life,  always 
now  produced  the  impulse  to  write. 

'  Midnight. — Lucy  is  asleep.  I  hope  she  has  been  happy  and 
they  have  been  kind  to  her.  I  saw  Mrs.  Wellesdon  talking  to  her 
after  dinner.  She  must  have  liked  that.  But  at  dinner  she 
seemed  to  be  sitting  silent  a  good  deal. 


478  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  What  a  strange  spectacle  is  this  country-house  life  to  anyone 
bringing  to  it  a  fresh  and  unaccustomed  eye  !  "After  all,"  said 
Mrs.  Wellesdon,  "you  must  admit  that  the  best  of  anything  is 
worth  keeping.  And  in  these  country-houses,  with  all  their  draw- 
backs, you  do  from  time  to  time  get  the  best  of  social  intercourse, 
a  phase  of  social  life  as  gay,  complex,  and  highly  finished  as  it 
can  possibly  be  made." 

'Certainly  this  applies  to  me  to-night.  When  have  I  enjoyed 
any  social  pleasure  so  much  as  my  talk  with  her  at  dinner  ?  When 
have  I  been  conscious  of  such  stimulus,  such  exhilaration,  as  the 
evening's  discussion  produced  in  me  ?  In  the  one  case,  Mrs. 
Wellesdon  taught  me  what  general  conversation  might  be — how 
nimble,  delicate,  and  pleasure-giving:  in  the  other,  there  was  the 
joy  of  the  intellectual  wrestle,  mingled  with  a  glad  respect  for 
one's  opponents.  Perhaps  nowhere,  except  on  some  such  ground 
and  in  some  such  circumstances  as  these,  could  a  debate  so 
earnest  have  taken  quite  so  wholesome  a  tone,  so  wide  a  range. 
We  were  equals — debaters,  not  controversialists — friends,  not 
rivals — in  the  quest  for  truth. 

'  Yet  what  drawbacks  !  This  army  of  servants — which  might 
be  an  army  of  slaves  without  a  single  manly  right,  so  mute,  im- 
passive, and  highly  trained  it  is — the  breeding  of  a  tyrannous 
temper  in  the  men,  of  a  certain  contempt  for  facts  and  actuality 
even  in  the  best  of  the  women.  Mrs.  Wellesdon  poured  out  her 
social  aspirations  to  me.  How  naive  and  fanciful  they  were  ! 
They  do  her  credit,  but  they  will  hardly  do  anyone  else  much 
good.  And  it  is  evident  that  they  mark  her  out  in  her  own  circle, 
that  they  have  brought  her  easily  admiration  and  respect,  so  that 
she  has  never  been  led  to  test  them,  as  any  one,  with  the  same 
social  interest,  living  closer  to  the  average  realities  and  griefs  of 
life,  must  have  been  led  to  test  them. 

'The  culture,  too,  of  these  aristocratic  women,  when  they  are 
cultured,  is  so  curious.  Quite  unconsciously  and  innocently  it 
takes  itself  for  much  more  than  it  is,  merely  by  contrast  with  the 
milieu — the  milieu  of  material  luxury  and  complication — in  which 
it  moves. 

'  But  I  am  ungrateful.  What  a  social  power  in  the  best  sense 
such  a  woman  might  become— a  woman  so  sensitively  endowed, 
so  nobly  planned  ! ' 

David  dropped  his  pen  awhile.  In  the  silence  of  the  great 
house,  a  silence  broken  only  by  the  breathings  of  a  rainy  autumn 
wind  through  the  trees  outside,  his  thought  took  that  picture- 
making  intensity  which  was  its  peculiar  gift.  Images  of  what  had 
been  in  his  own  life,  and  what  might  have  been — the  dream  of 
passion  which  had  so  deeply  marked  and  modified  his  manhood— 
Elise,  seen  in  the  clearer  light  of  his  richer  experience — his 
married  years — the  place  of  the  woman  in  the  common  life — on 
these  his  mind  brooded,  one  by  one,  till  gradually  the  solemn 
consciousness  of  opportunities  for  ever  missed,  of  failure,  of 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  479 

limitation,  evoked  another,  as  solemn,  but  sweeter  aud  more 
touching,  of  human  lives  irrevocably  dependent  on  his,  of  the 
pathetic  unalterable  claim  of  marriage,  the  poverty  and  hopeless- 
ness of  all  self-seeking,  the  essential  wealth,  rich  aud  making 
rich,  of  all  self-spending.  As  he  thought  of  his  wife  and  son  a 
deep  tenderness  flooded  the  man's  whole  nature.  With  a  long 
sigh,  it  was  as  though  he  took  them  both  in  his  arms,  adjusting 
his  strength  patiently  and  gladly  to  the  familiar  weight. 

Then,  by  a  natural  reaction,  feeling,  to  escape  itself,  passed 
into  speculative  reminiscence  and  meditation  of  a  wholly  different 
kind. 

'  Our  discussion  to-night  arose  from  an  attack — if  anyone  so 
gentle  can  be  said  to  attack — made  upon  me  by  Canon  Aylwin, 
on  the  subject  of  those  "  Tracts  on  the  New  Testament" — tracts 
of  mine,  of  which  we  have  published  three,  while  I  have  two  or 
three  more  half  done  in  my  writing-table  drawer.  He  said,  with 
a  certain  nervous  decision,  that  he  did  not  wish  to  discuss  the 
main  question,  but  he  would  like  to  ask  me,  Could  anyone  be  so 
sure  of  supposed  critical  and  historical  fact  as  to  be  clear  that  he 
was  right  in  proclaiming  it,  when  the  proclamation  of  it  meant 
the  inevitable  disturbance  in  his  fellow-men  of  conceptions 
whereon  their  moral  life  depended  ?  It  was  certain  that  he  could 
destroy;  it  was  most  uncertain,  even  to  himself,  whether  he  could 
do  anything  else,  with  the  best  intentions ;  and,  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred,  ought  not  the  certainty  of  doing  a  moral 
mischief  to  outweigh,  with  any  just  and  kindly  mind,  the  much 
feebler  and  less  solid  certainty  he  may  imagine  himself  to  have 
attained  with  regard  to  certain  matters  of  history  and  criticism  ? 

'  It  was  the  old  question  of  the  rights  of  "  heresy,"  the 
function  of  the  individual  in  the  long  history  of  thought.  "We 
fell  into  sides :  Lord  Driffield  and  I  against  the  Dean  and 
Canon  Aylwin.  The  Dean  did  not,  indeed,  contribute  much. 
He  sat  with  his  square  powerful  head  bent  forward,  throwing  in 
a  shrewd  comment  here  and  there,  mainly  on  the  logical  course 
of  the  argument.  But  when  we  came  to  the  main  question,  as 
we  inevitably  did,  he  withdrew  altogether,  though  he  listened. 

'"  No,"  he  said,  ''no.  I  am  not  competent.  It  has  not 
been  my  line  in  life.  I  have  found  more  than  enough  to  tax 
my  strength  in  the  practical  administration  of  the  goods  of 
Christ.  All  such  questions  I  leave,  and  must  leave,  to  experts, 
such  experts  as  " — and  he  mentioned  the  names  of  some  of  the 
leading  scholars  of  the  English  Church — "  or  as  my  friend  here," 
and  he  laid  his  hand  affectionately  on  Canon  Aylwin's  knee. 

'Strange!  He  leaves  to  experts  such  questions  as  those  of 
the  independence,  authenticity,  and  trustworthiness  of  the 
Gospel  records ;  of  the  culture  and  idiosyncrasies  of  the  first 
two  centuries  as  tending  to  throw  light  on  those  records  ;  of  the 
earliest  growth  of  dogma,  as,  thanks  mainly  to  German  labour, 
it  may  now  be  exhibited  within  the  New  Testament  itself.  In 


480  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

a  Church  of  private  judgment,  he  takes  all  this  at  second  hand, 
after  having  vowed  at  his  ordination  "  to  be  diligent  in  such 
studies  as  help  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  " ! 

'  Yet  a  better,  a  more  God-fearing,  a  more  sincere,  and, 
within  certain  lines,  a  more  acute  man  than  Dean  Manley  it 
would  certainly  be  difficult  to  find  at  the  present  time  within 
the  English  Church.  It  is  an  illustration  of  the  dualism  in  which 
so  many  minds  tend  to  live,  divided  between  two  worlds,  two 
standards,  two  wholly  different  modes  of  thought — the  one  ap- 
plied to  religion  even  in  its  intellectual  aspect,  the  other  applied 
to  all  the  rest  of  existence.  Yet — is  truth  divided? 

'  To  return  to  Canon  Aylwin.  I  could  only  meet  his  reproach, 
which  he  had  a  special  right  to  make,  for  he  has  taken  the 
kindliest  interest  in  some  of  the  earlier  series  of  our  "  Workmen's 
Tracts,"  by  going  back  to  some  extent  to  first  principles.  I 
endeavoured  to  argue  the  matter  on  ground  more  or  less  common 
to  us  both.  If  both  knowledge  and  morality  have  only  become 
possible  for  man  by  the  perpetual  action  of  a  Divine  spirit  on 
his  since  the  dawn  of  conscious  life ;  if  this  action  has  taken 
effect  in  human  history,  as,  broadly  speaking,  the  Canon  would 
admit,  through  a  free  and  constant  struggle  of  opposites,  whether 
in  the  realm  of  interest  or  the  realm  of  opinion  ;  and  if  this 
struggle,  perpetually  reconciled,  perpetually  renewed,  is  the 
divinely  ordered  condition,  nay,  if  you  will,  the  sacred  task  of 
human  life, — how  can  the  Christian,  who  clings,  above  all  men, 
to  the  victory  of  the  Divine  in  the  human,  who,  moreover,  in 
the  course  of  his  history  has  affronted  and  resisted  all  possible 
"authorities"  but  that  of  conscience — how  can  he  lawfully 
resent  the  fullest  and  largest  freedom  of  speech,  employed 
disinterestedly  and  in  good  faith,  on  the  part  of  his  brother 
man  ?  The  truth  must  win  ;  and  it  is  only  through  the  free  life 
of  the  spirit  that  she  has  hitherto  prevailed.  So  much,  at  least, 
the  English  Churchman  must  hold. 

It  comes  to  this :  must  there  be  no  movement  of  thought 
because  the  individual  who  lives  by  custom  and  convention  may 
at  least  temporarily  suffer?  Yet  the  risks  of  the  individual 
throughout  nature — so  far  we  were  agreed — are  the  correlative 
of  his  freedom  and  responsibility. 

'  "Ah,  well,"  said  the  dear  old  man  at  last,  with  a  change 
of  expression  which  went  to  my  heart,  so  wistful  and  spiritual  it 
was,  "perhaps  I  have  been  faithless;  perhaps  the  Christian 
minister  would  do  better  to  trust  the  Lord  with  His  own.  But 
before  we  leave  the  subject,  let  me  say,  once  for  all,  that  I  have 
read  all  your  tracts,  and  weighed  most  carefully  all  that  they 
contain.  The  matter  of  them  bears  on  what  for  me  has  been  the 
study  of  many  years,  and  all  I  can  say  is  that  I  regard  your 
methods  of  reasoning  as  unsound,  and  your  conclusions  as 
wholly  false.  I  have  been  a  literary  man  from  my  youth  as  well 
as  a  theologian,  and  I  completely  dissent  from  your  literary  judg- 
ments. I  believe  that  if  you  had  not  been  already  possessed  by 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  481 

a  hostile  philosophy — which  will  allow  no  space  for  miracle  and 
revelation — you  would  not  have  arrived  at  them.  I  am  old  and 
you  are  young.  Let  me  bear  my  testimony  while  there  is  time. 
I  have  taken  a  great  interest  in  you  and  your  work." 

'  He  spoke  with  the  most  exquisite  courtesy  and  simplicity, 
his  look  was  dignified  and  heavenly.  I  felt  like  kneeling  to  ask 
his  blessing,  even  though  he  could  only  give  it  in  the  shape  of 
a  prayer  for  my  enlightenment. 

'  But  now,  alone  with  conscience,  alone  with  God,  how  does 
the  matter  stand  ?  The  challenge  of  such  a  life  and  conviction 
as  Canon  Aylwin's  is  a  searching  one.  It  bids  one  look  deep 
into  one's  self,  it  calls  one  to  truth  and  soberness.  What  I 
seem  to  see  is  that  he  and  I  both  approach  Christianity  with  a 
prepossession,  with,  as  he  says,  "a  philosophy."  His  is  a  pre- 
possession in  favour  of  a  system  of  interference  from  without, 
by  Divine  or  maleficent  powers,  for  their  own  ends,  with  the 
ordinary  sequences  of  nature — which  once  covered,  one  may  say, 
the  whole  field  of  human  thought  and  shaped  the  whole  horizon 
of  humanity.  From  the  beginning  of  history  this  prepossession 
— which  may  be  regarded  in  all  its  phases  as  an  expression  of 
man's  natural  impatience  to  form  a  working  hypothesis  of  things 
— has  struggled  with  the  "  impulse  to  know."  And  slowly, 
irrevocably,  from  age  to  age  the  impulse  to  know  has  beaten 
back  the  impulse  to  imagine,  has  confined  the  prepossession  of 
faith  within  narrower  and  narrower  limits,  till  at  last  it  is  even 
preparing  to  deny  it  the  guidance  of  religion,  which  it  has  so 
long  claimed.  For  the  impulse  of  science,  justified  by  the  long 
wrestle  of  centuries,  is  becoming  itself  religious, — and  there  is  a 
new  awe  rising  on  the  brow  of  Knowledge. 

'  My  prepossession— but  let  the  personal  pronoun  be  merely 
understood  as  attaching  me  to  that  band  of  thinkers,  "of  all 
countries,  nations,  and  languages,"  whose  pupil  and  creature  I 
am — is  simply  that  of  science,  of  the  organised  knowledge  of  the 
race.  It  is  drawn  from  the  whole  of  experience,  it  governs  with- 
out dispute  every  department  of  thought,  and  without  it,  in  fact, 
neither  Canon  Aylwin  nor  I  could  think  at  all. 

'  Moreover,  I  humbly  believe  that  I  desire  the  same  spiritual 
goods  as  he  :  holiness,  the  knowledge  of  God,  the  hope  of  immor- 
tality. But  while  for  him  these  things  are  bound  up  with  the 
maintenance  of  the  older  prepossession,  for  me  there  is  no  such 
connection  at  all. 

'  And  again,  I  seem  to  see  that  when  this  intellect  of  his,  so 
keen,  so  richly  stored,  approaches  the  special  ground  of  Christian 
thought,  it  changes  in  quality.  It  becomes  wholly  subordinate 
to  the  affections,  to  the  influences  of  education  and  habitual 
surroundings.  Talk  to  him  of  Dante,  of  the  influence  of  the  bar- 
barian invasions  on  the  culture  and  development  of  Europe,  of 
the  Oxford  movement,  you  will  find  in  him  an  historical  sense, 
a  delicate  accuracy  of  perception,  a  luminous  variety  of  statement, 
which  carry  you  with  h'm  into  the  very  heart  of  the  truth.  But 


482  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

discuss  with  him  the  critical  habits  and  capacity  of  those  earliest 
Christian  writers,  on  whose  testimony  so  much  of  the  Christian 
canon  depends — ask  him  to  separate  the  strata  of  material  in  the 
'New  Testament,  according  to  their  relative  historical  and  ethical 
value,  under  the  laws  which  he  would  himself  apply  to  any  other 
literature  in  the  world — invite  him  to  exclude  this  as  legendary 
and  that  as  accretion,  to  distinguish  between  the  original  kernel 
and  that  which  the  fancy  or  the  theology  of  the  earliest  hearers 
inevitably  added — and  you  will  feel  that  a  complete  change  has 
come  over  the  mind.  However  subtle  and  precise  his  arguments 
may  outwardly  look,  they  are  at  bottom  the  arguments  of  affec- 
tion, of  the  special  pleader.  He  has  fenced  off  the  first  century 
from  the  rest  of  knowledge ;  has  invented  for  all  its  products 
alike  special  criteria  and  a  special  perspective.  He  cannot 
handle  the  New  Testament  in  the  spirit  of  science,  for  he  ap- 
proaches it  on  his  knees.  The  imaginative  habit  of  a  lifetime  has 
decided  for  him  ;  and  you  ask  of  him  what  is  impossible. 

'"An  end  must  come  to  scepticism  somewhere!"  he  once 
said  in  the  course  of  our  talk.  "Faith  must  take  her  leap — you 
know  as  well  as  I  ! — if  there  is  to  be  faith  at  all." 

'  Yes,  but  where — at  what  point  ?  Is  the  clergyman  who  talks 
with  sincere  distress  about  infidel  views  of  Scripture  and  preaches 
against  them,  while  at  the  same  time  he  could  not  possibly  give 
an  intelligible  account  of  the  problem  of  the  Synoptic  Gospels  as 
it  now  presents  itself  to  the  best  knowledge,  or  an  outline  of  the 
case  pressed  by  science  for  more  than  half  a  century  with  in- 
creasing force  and  success  against  the  historical  character  of  St. 
John's  Gospel — is  he  justified  in  making  his  ignorance  the  leaping- 
point  ? 

'  Yet  the  upshot  of  all  our  talk  is  that  I  am  restless  and  op- 
pressed. 

' ...  I  sit  and  think  of  these  nine  years  since  Berkeley  and 
sorrow  first  laid  hold  of  me.  Berkeley  rooted  in  me  the  concep- 
tion of  mind  as  the  independent  antecedent  of  all  experience,  and 
none  of  the  scientific  materialism,  which  so  troubles  Ancrum  that 
he  will  ultimately  take  refuge  from  it  in  Catholicism,  affects  me. 
But  the  ethical  inadequacy  of  Berkeley  became  very  soon  plain  to 
me.  I  remember  I  was  going  one  day  through  one  of  the  worst 
slums  of  Ancoats,  when  a  passage  in  his  examination  of  the  origin 
of  evil  occurred  to  me  : 

'  "But  we  should  further  consider  that  the  very  blemishes 
and  defects  of  nature  are  not  without  their  use,  in  that  they  make 
an  agreeable  sort  of  variety,  and  augment  the  beauty  of  the  rest 
of  the  creation,  as  shades  in  a  picture  serve  to  set  off  the  brighter 
and  more  enlightened  parts." 

'  I  had  just  done  my  best  to  save  a  little  timid  scarecrow  of  a 
child,  aged  about  six,  from  the  blows  of  its  brutal  father,  who 
had  already  given  it  a  black  eye — my  heart  blazed  within  me,— 
and  from  that  moment  Berkeley  had  no  spell  for  me. 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  483 

'  Then  came  that  moment  when,  after  my  marriage,  haunted 
as  I  was  by  the  perpetual  oppression  of  Manchester's  pain  and 
poverty,  the  Christian  mythology,  the  Christian  theory  with  all 
its  varied  and  beautiful  flowerings  in  human  life,  had  for  a  time 
an  attraction  for  me  so  strong  that  Dora  naturally  hoped  every- 
thing, and  I  felt  myself  becoming  day  by  day  more  of  an  orthodox 
Christian.  What  checked  the  tendency  I  can  hardly  now  remem- 
ber in  detail.  It  was  a  converging  influence  of  books  and  life — 
no  doubt  largely  helped,  with  regard  to  the  details  of  Christian 
belief,  by  the  pressure  of  the  German  historical  movement,  as  I 
became  more  and  more  fully  acquainted  with  it. 

'  At  any  rate,  St.  Damian's  gradually  came  to  mean  nothing 
to  me,  though  I  kept,  and  keep  still,  a  close  working  friendship 
with  most  of  the  people  there.  But  I  am  thankful  for  that 
Christian  phase.  It  enabled  me  to  realise  as  nothing  else  could 
the  strength  of  the  Christian  case. 

'  And  since  then  it  has  been  a  long  and  weary  journey  through 
many  paths  of  knowledge  and  philosophy,  till  of  late  years  the 
new  English  phase  of  Kantian  and  Hegelian  thought,  which  has 
been  spreading  in  our  universities,  and  which  is  the  outlet  of 
men  who  can  neither  hand  themselves  over  to  authority,  like 
Newman,  nor  to  a  scientific  materialism,  like  Clifford  and 
Haeckel,  nor  to  a  mere  patient  nescience  in  the  sphere  of  meta- 
physics, like  Herbert  Spencer,  has  come  to  me  with  an  ever- 
increasing  power  of  healing  and  edification. 

'That  the  spiritual  principle  in  nature  and  man  exists  and 
governs ;  that  mind  cannot  be  explained  out  of  anything  but 
itself ;  that  the  human  consciousness  derives  from  a  universal 
consciousness,  and  is  thereby  capable  both  of  knowledge  and  of 
goodness  ;  that  the  phenomena  and  history  of  conscience  are  the 
highest  revelation  of  God  ;  that  we  are  called  to  co-operation  in 
a  divine  work,  and  in  spite  of  pain  and  sin  may  find  ground  for 
an  infinite  trust,  covering  the  riddle  of  the  individual  lot,  in  the 
history  and  character  of  that  work  in  man,  so  far  as  it  has  gone 
— these  things  are  deeper  and  deeper  realities  to  me.  They 
govern  my  life  ;  they  give  me  peace  ;  they  breathe  to  me  hope. 

'  But  the  last  glow,  the  certainties,  the  vision,  of  faith  !  Ah  ! 
me,  I  believe  that  He  is  there,  yet  my  heart  gropes  in  darkness. 
All  that  is  personality,  holiness,  compassion  in  us,  must  be  in 
Him  intensified  beyond  all  thought.  Yet  I  have  no  familiarity 
of  prayer.  I  cannot  use  the  religious  language  which  should  be 
mine  without  a  sense  of  unreality.  My  heart  is  athirst. 

'  And  can  religion  possibly  depend  upon  a  long  process  of 
thought  ?  How  few  can  think  their  way  to  Him — perhaps  none, 
indeed,  by  the  logical  intellect  alone.  He  reveals  himself  to  the 
simple.  Speak  to  me,  to  me  also,  0  my  Father  ! ' 

Sunday  morning  broke  fresh  and  golden  after  a  wet  night. 
Lucy  lay  still  in  the  early  dawn,  thinking  of  the  day  that  had  to 
be  faced,  feeling  more  cheerful,  however,  with  the  refreshment 


484  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

of  sleep,  and  inclined  to  hope  that  she  might  have  got  over  the 
worst,  and  that  better  things  might  be  in  store  for  her. 

So  that  when  David  said  to  her,  '  You  poor  little  person,  did 
they  eat  you  up  last  night — Lady  Driffield  and  her  set  ?'  she  only 
answered  evasively  that  Mrs.  Wellesdon  had  been  nice,  but  tha't 
Lady  Driffield  had  very  bad  manners,  and  she  was  sure  every- 
body thought  so. 

To  which  David  heartily  assented.  Then  Lucy  put  her 
question  : 

'  Did  you  think,  when  you  looked  at  me  last  night  at  dinner, 
that  I— that  I  looked  nice  ? '  she  said,  flushing,  yet  driven  on  by 
an  inward  smart. 

'  Of  course  I  did  ! '  David  declared.  '  Perhaps  you  should 
hold  yourself  up  a  little  more.  The  women  here  are  so  asto- 
nishingly straight  and  tall,  like  young  poplars.' 

'  Mrs.  Wellesdon  especially,'  Lucy  reflected,  with  a  pang. 

'But  you  thought  I — had  done  my  hair  nicely?'  she  said 
desperately. 

'  Very  !  And  it  was  the  prettiest  hair  there  ! '  he  said, 
smoothing  back  the  golden  brown  curls  from  her  temple. 

His  compliment  so  delighted  her  that  she  dressed  and  pre- 
pared to  descend  to  breakfast  with  a  light  heart.  She  was  not 
often  now  so  happily  susceptible  to  a  word  of  praise  from  him  ; 
she  was  more  exacting  than  she  had  once  been,  but  since  her 
acquaintance  with  Lady  Driffield  she  had  been  brought  low  ! 

And  her  evil  fortune  returned  upon  her,  alas,  at  breakfast, 
and  throughout  the  day.  Breakfast,  indeed,  seemed  to  her  a 
more  formidable  meal  than  any.  For  people  straggled  in,  and 
the  ultimate  arrangement  of  the  table  seemed  entirely  to  depend 
upon  the  personal  attractiveness  of  individuals,  upon  whether 
they  annexed  or  repelled  new-comers.  Lucy  found  herself  at 
one  time  alone  and  shivering  in  the  close  neighbourhood  of  Lady 
Driffield,  who  was  intrenched  behind  the  tea-urn,  and  after 
giving  her  guest  a  finger,  had,  Lucy  believed,  spoken  once  to  her, 
expressing  a  desire  for  scones.  The  meal  itself,  with  its  elabo- 
rate cakes  and  meats  and  fruits,  intimidated  Lucy  even  more 
than  the  dinner  had  done.  The  breach  between  it  and  any  small 
housekeeping  was  more  complete.  She  felt  that  she  was  eating 
like  a  school-girl ;  she  devoured  her  toast  dry,  out  of  sheer  ina- 
bility to  ask  for  butter  ;  and,  sitting  for  the  most  part  isolated  in 
the  unpopular — that  is  to  say,  the  Lady  Driffield — quarter  of  the 
table,  went  generally  half-starved. 

As  for  David,  he,  with  Lord  Driffield,  Mrs.  Wellesdon,  Lady 
Alice,  Reggie,  and  Mrs.  Shepton  for  company  at  the  other  end, 
had  on  the  whole  an  excellent  time.  There  was,  however,  one 
uncomfortable  moment  of  friction  between  him  and  Colonel 
Danby,  who  had  strolled  in  last  of  all,  with  the  vicious  look  of  a 
man  who  has  not  had  the  good  night  to  which  he  considered 
himself  entitled,  and  must  somehow  wreak  it  on  the  world. 

Just  before  he  entered,  Lady  Driffield,  looking  round  to  see 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  485 

that  the  servants  had  departed,  had  languidly  started  the  ques- 
tion :  '  Does  one  talk  to  one's  maid  ?  Do  you,  Marcia,  talk  to 
your  maid  ?  How  can  anyone  ever  find  anything  to  say  to  one's 
maid?' 

The  topic  proved  unexpectedly  interesting.  Both  Marcia 
Wellesdon  and  Lady  Alice  declared  that  their  maids  were  their 
bosom  friends.  Lady  Driffield  shrugged  her  shoulders,  then 
looked  at  Mrs.  Grieve,  who  had  sat  silent,  opened  her  mouth  to 
speak,  recollected  herself,  and  said  nothing.  At  that  moment 
Colonel  Dan  by  entered. 

'  I  say,  Danby  ! '  called  the  young  attache,  Marcia's  brother, 
'  do  you  talk  to  your  valet  ? ' 

'  Talk  to  my  valet ! '  said  the  Colonel,  putting  up  his  eye-glass 
to  look  at  the  dishes  on  the  side  table — he  spoke  with  suavity, 
but  there  was  an  ominous  pucker  in  the  brow — '  what  should  I 
do  that  for  ?  I  don't  pay  the  fellow  for  his  conversation,  I  pre- 
sume, but  to  button  my  boots,  and  precious  badly  he  does  it  too. 
I  don't  even  know  what  his  elegant  surname  is.  "Thomas,"  or 
"  James,"  or  "  William  "  is  enough  peg  for  me  to  hang  my  orders 
on.  I  generally  christen  them  fresh  when  they  come  to  me.' 

Little  Lady  Alice  looked  indignant.  Lucy  caught  her  husband's 
face,  and  saw  it  suddenly  pale,  as  it  easily  did  under  a  quick 
emotion.  He  was  thinking  of  the  valet  he  had  seen  at  the  station 
standing  by  the  Danbys'  luggage — a  dark,  anxious-looking  man, 
whose  likeness  to  one  of  the  compositors  in  his  own  office — a 
young  fellow  for  whom  he  had  a  particular  friendship — had 
attracted  his  notice. 

'  Why  do  you  suppose  he  puts  up  with  you — your  servant?' 
he  said,  bending  across  to  Colonel  Danby.  He  smiled  a  little, 
but  his  eyes  betrayed  him. 

'  Puts  up  with  me  ! '  Colonel  Danby  lifted  his  brows,  regard- 
ing David  with  an  indescribable  air  of  insolent  surprise.  '  Because 
I  make  it  worth  his  while  in  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence ;  that's 
all.' 

And  he  put  down  his  pheasant  salmi  with  a  clatter,  while  his 
wife  handed  him  bread  and  other  propitiations. 

'  Probably  because  he  has  a  mother  or  sister,'  said  David, 
slowly.  '  We  trust  a  good  deal  to  the  patience  of  our  "  masters."  ' 

The  Colonel  stopped  his  wife's  attentions  with  an  angry  hand. 
But  just  as  he  was  about  to  launch  a  reply  more  congruous  with 
his  gout  and  his  contempt  for  '  Driffield's  low-life  friends'  than 
with  the  amenities  of  ordinary  society,  and  while  Lady  Venetia 
was  slowly  and  severely  studying  David  through  her  eyeglass, 
Lord  Driffleld  threw  himself  into  the  breach  with  a  nervous  story 
of  some  favourite  'man'  of  his  own,  and  the  storm  blew  over. 

Lady  Driffield,  indeed,  who  herself  disliked  Colonel  Danby,  as 
one  overbearing  person  dislikes  another,  and  only  invited  him 
because  Lady  Venetia  was  her  cousin  and  an  old  friend,  was 
rather  pleased  with  David's  outbreak.  After  breakfast  she  gra- 
ciously asked  him  if  she  should  show  him  the  picture  gallery. 


486  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

But  David  was  still  seething  with  wrath,  and  looked  at  Vande- 
veldes  and  De  Hoochs  and  Rembrandts  with  a  distracted  eye. 
Once,  indeed,  in  a  little  alcove  of  the  gallery  hung  with  English 
portraits,  he  woke  to  a  start  of  interest. 

'  Imagine  that  that  should  be  Gray  ! '  he  said,  pointing  to  a 
picture — well  known  to  him  through  engraving — of  a  little  man 
in  a  bob  wig,  with  a  turned-up  nose  and  a  button  chin,  and  a 
general  air  of  eager  servility.  '  Gray, — one  of  our  greatest 
poets  ! '  He  stood  wondering,  feeling  it  impossible  to  fit  the 
dignity  of  Gray's  verse  to  the  insignificance  of  Gray's  outer  man. 

'  Oh,  Gray — a  great  poet,  you  think  ?  I  don't  agree  with  you. 
I  have  always  thought  the  "Night  Thoughts  "  very  dull,'  said 
Lady  Driffield,  sweeping  along  to  the  next  picture,  in  a  sublime 
unconsciousness.  David  smiled — a  flash  of  mirth  that  cleared  his 
whole  look — and  was  himself  again.  Moreover  he  was  soon  taken 
possession  of  by  Lord  Driffield,  and  the  two  disappeared  for  a 
happy  morning  spent  between  the  library  and  the  woods. 

Meanwhile  Lucy  went  to  church,  and  had  the  bliss  of  feeling 
that  she  made  one  too  many  in  the  omnibus,  and  that,  squeeze 
herself  as  small  as  she  might,  she  was  still  crushing  Miss  Danby's 
new  dress — a  fact  of  which  both  mother  and  daughter  were  clearly 
aware.  Looking  back  upon  it,  Lucy  could  not  remember  that  for 
her  there  had  been  any  conversation  going  or  coming  ;  but  it  is 
quite  possible  that  her  memory  of  Benet's  Park  was  even  more 
pronounced  than  in  reality. 

David  and  Lord  Driffield  came  in  when  lunch  was  half  over, 
and  afterwards  there  was  a  general  strolling  into  the  garden. 

'  Are  you  all  right  ? '  said  David  to  his  wife,  taking  her  arm 
affectionately. 

'  Oh  yes,  thank  you,'  she  said  hurriedly,  perceiving  that  Reggie 
Calvert  was  coming  up  to  her.  '  I'm  all  right.  Don't  take  my 
arm,  David.  It  looks  so  odd.' 

And  she  turned  delightedly  to  talk  to  the  young  diplomatist, 
who  had  the  kindliness  and  charm  of  his  race,  and  devoted  him- 
self to  her  very  prettily  for  a  while,  though  they  had  great 
difficulty  in  finding  topics,  and  he  was  coming  finally  to  the  end 
of  his  resources  when  Lady  Driffield  announced  that  '  the  carriage 
would  be  round  in  half  an  hour.' 

4  Goodness  gracious  !  then  I  must  write  some  letters  first,'  he 
said,  with  the  importance  of  the  budding  ambassador,  and  ran 
into  the  house. 

The  others  seemed  to  melt  away — David  and  Canon  Aylwin 
strolling  off  together — and  soon  Lucy  found  herself  alone.  She 
sat  down  in  a  seat  round  which  curved  a  yew  hedge,  and  whence 
there  was  a  somewhat  wide  view  over  a  bare,  hilly  country,  with 
suggestions  everywhere  of  factory  life  in  the  hollows,  till  on  the 
southwest  it  rose  and  melted  into  the  Derbyshire  moors.  Autumn 
— late  autumn — was  on  all  the  reddening  woods  and  in  the  cool 
sunshine  ;  but  there  was  a  bright  border  of  sunflowers  and  dahlias 
near,  which  no  frost  had  yet  touched,  and  the  gaiety  both  of  the 


CHAP,  iv  MATURITY  487 

flowers  and  of  the  clear  blue  distance  forbade  as  yet  any  thought 
of  winter. 

Lucy's  absent  and  discontented  eye  saw  neither  flowers  nor 
distance;  but  it  was  perforce  arrested  before  long  by  the  figure 
of  Mrs.  Shepton,  who  came  round  the  corner  of  the  yew  hedge. 

'  Have  they  gone  ? '  said  that  lady. 

*  Who  ? '  said  Lucy,  startled.  '  I  heard  a  carriage  drive  off 
just  now,  I  think.' 

'  Ah  !  then  they  are  gone.  Lady  Driffield  has  carried  off  all 
her  friends — except  Mrs.  Wellesdon,  who,  I  believe,  is  lying  down 
with  a,  headache — to  tea  at  Sir  Wilfrid  Herbarfs.  You  see  the 
house  there' — and  she  pointed  to  a  dim,  white  patch  among 
woods,  about  five  miles  off.  '  It  is  not  very  civil  of  a  hostess, 
perhaps,  to  leave  her  guests  in  this  way.  But  Lady  Driffield  is 
Lady  Driffield.' 

Mrs.  Shepton  laughed,  and  threw  back  the  flapping  green 
gauze  veil  with  which  she  generally  shrouded  a  freckled  and 
serviceable  complexion,  in  no  particular  danger,  one  would  have 
thought,  of  spoiling. 

Lucy  instinctively  looked  round  to  see  how  near  they  were  to 
the  house,  and  whether  there  were  any  windows  open. 

'  It  must  be  very  difficult,  I  should  think,  to  be — to  be  friends 
with  Lady  Driffield'.' 

She  looked  up  at  Mrs.  Shepton  with  the  childish  air  of  one 
both  hungry  for  gossip  and  conscious  of  the  naughtiness  of  it. 

Mrs.  Shepton  laughed  again.  She  had  never  seen  anyone 
behave  worse,  she  reflected,  than  Lady  Driffield  to  this  little 
Manchester  person,  who  might  be  uninteresting,  but  was  quite 
inoffensive. 

'  Friends  !  I  should  think  so.  An  armed  neutrality  is  all 
that  pays  with  Lady  Driffield.  I  have  been  here  many  times,  and 
I  can  now  keep  her  in  order  perfectly.  You  see,  Lady  Driffield 
has  a  brother  whom  she  happens  to  be  fond  of — everybody  has 
some  soft  place — and  this  brother  is  a  Liberal  member  down  in 
our  West  Riding  part  of  the  world.  And  my  husband  is  the 
editor  of  a  paper  that  possesses  a  great  deal  of  political  influence 
in  the  brother's  constituency.  We  have  backed  him  up  through 
this  election.  He  is  not  a  bad  fellow  at  all,  though  about  as 
much  of  a  Liberal  at  heart  as  this  hedge.'  and  Mrs.  Shepton 
struck  it  lightly  with  the  parasol  she  carried.  'My  husband 
thinks  we  got  him  in — by  the  skin  of  his  teeth.  So  Lady  Drif- 
field asks  us  periodically,  and  behaves  herself,  more  or  less.  My 
husband  likes  Lord  Driffield.  So  do  I;  and  an  occasional  descent 
upon  country  houses  amuses  me.  It  especially  entertains  me  to 
make  Lady  Driffield  talk  politics.' 

'She  must  be  very  Conservative,'  said  Lucy,  heartily.  Con- 
servatism stood  in  her  mind  for  the  selfish  exclusiveness  of  big 
people.  Her  father  had  always  been  a  bitter  Eadical. 

'  Oh  dear  no — not  at  all !  Lady  Driffield  believes  herself  an 
advanced  Liberal ;  that  is  the  comedy  of  it.  Liberals ! '  cried 


488  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Mrs.  Shepton,  with  a  sudden  bitterness,  which  transformed  the 
broad,  plain,  sleepy  face.  '  I  should  like  to  set  her  to  work  for  a 
year  in  one  of  those  mills  down  there.  She  might  have  some 
politics  worth  having  by  the  end  of  it.' 

Lucy  looked  at  her  in  amazement.  Why,  the  mill  people  were 
very  happy — most  of  them. 

4  Ah  well ! '  said  Mrs.  Shepton,  recovering  herself,  '  what  we 
have  to  do — we  intelligent  middle  class — for  the  next  generation 
or  two,  is  to  drive  these  aristocrats.  Then  it  will  be  seen  what 
is  to  be  done  with  them  finally.  Well,  Mrs.  Grieve,  we  must 
amuse  ourselves.  Au  revoir  !  My  husband  has  some  writing  to 
do,  and  I  must  go  and  help  him.' 

She  waved  her  hand  and  disappeared,  sweeping  her  green  and 
yellow  skirts  behind  her  with  an  air  as  though  Benet's  Park  were 
already  a  seminary  for  the  correction  of  the  great. 

Lucy  sat  on  pondering  till  she  felt  dull  and  cold,  and  decided 
to  go  in.  On  finding  her  way  back  she  passed  round  a  side  of 
the  house  which  she  had  not  yet  seen.  It  was  the  oldest  part  of 
the  building,  and  the  windows,  which  were  mullioned  and 
narrow,  and  at  some  height  from  the  ground,  looked  out  upon  a 
small  bowling-green,  closely  walled  in  from  the  rest  of  the 
gardens  and  the  park  by  a  thick  screen  of  trees.  She  lingered 
along  the  path  looking  at  a  few  late  roses  which  were  still  bloom- 
ing in  this  sheltered  spot  against  the  wall  of  the  house,  when  she 
was  startled  by  the  sound  of  her  own  name,  and,  looking  up,  she 
saw  that  there  was  an  open  window  above  her.  The  temptation 
was  too  great.  She  held  her  breath  and  listened. 

'  Lord  Driffield  says  he  married  her  when  he  was  quite  young, 
that  accounts  for  it. '  Was  not  the  voice  Lady  Alice's  ?  '  But  it 
is  a  pity  that  she  is  not  more  equal  to  him.  I  never  saw  a  more 
striking  face,  did  you  ?  Yet  Lord  Driffield  says  he  is  not  as 
good-looking  as  he  promised  to  be  as  a  boy.  I  wish  we  had  been 
there  last  night  after  dinner,  Marcia  !  They  say  he  gave  Colonel 
Danby  such  a  dressing  about  some  workmen's  question.  Colonel 
Danby  was  laying  down  the  law  about  strikes  in  his  usual  way — 
he  is  an  odious  creature  ! — and  wishing  that  the  Government 
would  just  send  an  infantry  regiment  into  the  middle  of  the 
Yorkshire  miners  that  are  on  strike  now,  when  Mr.  Grieve  fired 
up.  And  everybody  backed  him.  Keggie  told  me  it  was  splendid  ; 
he  never  saw  a  better  shindy.  It  is  a  pity  about  her.  Everybody 
says  he  might  have  a  great  career  if  he  pleased.  And  she  can't 
be  any  companion  to  him. — Now,  Marcia,  you  know  your  head  is 
better,  so  don't  say  it  isn't !  Why,  I  have  used  a  whole  bottle  of 
eau  de  Cologne  on  you.' 

So  chattered  pretty,  kindly  Lady  Alice,  sitting  with  her  back 
to  the  window  beside  Marcia  Wellesdon.  Lucy  stood  still  a 
moment,  could  not  hear  what  Mrs.  Wellesdon  said  languidly  in 
answer,  then  crept  on,  her  lip  quivering. 

From  then  till  long  after  the  dark  had  fallen  she  was  quite 
alone.  David,  coming  back  from  a  long  walk,  and  tea  at  the 


CHAP.  IV  MATURITY  489 

agent's  house  on  the  further  edge  of  the  estate,  found  his  wife 
lying  on  her  bed,  and  the  stars  beginning  to  look  in  upon  her 
through  the  unshuttered  windows. 

'  Why,  Lucy  !  aren't  you  well,  dear  ? '  he  said,  hurrying  up  to 
her. 

'Oh  yes,  very  well,  thank  you,'  she  said,  in  a  constrained 
voice.  '  My  head  aches  rather.' 

'  Who  has  been  looking  after  you  ? '  he  said,  instantly  reproach- 
ing himself  for  the  enjoyment  of  his  own  afternoon. 

'  I  have  been  here  since  three  o'clock.' 

'  And  nobody  gave  you  any  tea  ? '  he  asked,  flushing. 

'  No,  I  went  down,  but  there  was  nobody  in  the  drawing- 
room.  I  suppose  the  footman  thought  nobody  was  in.' 

'  Where  was  Lady  Driffield  ? ' 

'  Oh  !  she  and  most  of  them  went  out  to  tea — to  a  house  a 
good  way  off.' 

Lucy's  tone  was  dreariness  itself.  David  sat  still,  his  breath 
coming  quickly.  Then  suddenly  Lucy  turned  round  and  drew 
him  down  to  her  passionately. 

'  When  can  we  get  home  ?    Is  there  an  early  train  ? ' 

Then  David  understood.  He  took  her  in  his  arms,  and  she 
broke  down  and  cried,  sobbing  out  a  catalogue  of  griefs  that  was 
only  half  coherent.  But  he  saw  at  once  that  she  had  been  neg- 
lected and  slighted,  nay  more,  that  she  had  been  somehow 
wounded  to  the  quick.  His  clasped  hand  trembled  on  his  knee. 
This  was  hospitality  !  He  had  gauged  Lady  Driffield  well. 

'  An  early  train  ? '  he  said,  with  frowning  decision.  '  Yes,  of 
course.  There  is  to  be  an  eight  o'clock  breakfast  for  those  who 
want  to  get  off.  We  shall  be  home  by  a  little  after  nine.  Cheer 
up,  darling.  I  will  look  after  you  to-night — and  think  of  Sandy 
to-morrow  ! ' 

He  laid  his  cheek  tenderly  against  hers,  full  of  a  passion  of 
resentment  and  pity.  As  for  her,  the  feeling  with  which  she 
clung  to  him  was  more  like  the  feeling  she  had  first  shown  him 
on  the  Wakely  moors,  than  anything  she  had  known  since. 

'  Sandy  !  why  don't  you  say  good  morning,  sir  ? '  said  David  next 
morning,  standing  on  the  threshold  of  his  own  study,  with  Lucy 
just  behind.  His  face  was  beaming  with  the  pleasures  of  home. 

Sandy,  who  was  lying  curled  up  in  David's  arm-chair,  looked 
sleepily  at  his  parents.  His  thumb  was  tightly  wedged  in  his 
mouth,  and  with  the  other  he  held  pressed  against  him  a  hideous 
rag  doll,  which  had  been  presented  to  him  in  his  cradle. 

'Jane's  asleep,'  he  said,  just  removing  his  thumb  for  the  pur- 
pose, and  then  putting  it  back  again. 

'  Heartless  villain  ! '  said  David,  taking  possession  of  both  him 
and  Jane.  '  And  do  you  mean  to  say  you  aren't  glad  to  see 
Daddy  and  Mammy  ? ' 

'Zes — but  Sandy's  so  fond  of  child  wen,'  said  Sandy,  cuddling 
Jane  up  complacently,  and  subsiding  into  his  father's  arms. 


490  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Husband  and  wife  laughed  into  each  other's  eyes.  Then  Lucy 
knelt  down  to  tie  the  child's  shoe,  and  David,  first  kissing  the 
boy,  bent  forward  and  laid  another  kiss  on  the  mother's  hair. 


CHAPTER  V 

'  AN  exciting  post,'  said  David  to  Lucy  one  morning  as  she 
entered  the  dining-room  for  breakfast.  '  Louie  proposes  to  bring 
her  little  girl  over  to  see  us,  and  Ancrum  will  be  home  to-night ! ' 

'  Louie ! '  repeated  Mrs.  Grieve,  standing  still  in  her  amaze- 
ment. '  "What  do  you  mean  ? ' 

It  was  certainly  unexpected.  David  had  not  heard  from  Louie 
for  more  than  six  months  -,  his  remittances  to  her,  however,  were 
at  all  times  so  casually  acknowledged  that  he  had  taken  no  par- 
ticular notice  ;  and  he  and  she  had  not  met  for  two  years  and 
more — since  that  visit  to  Paris,  in  fact,  recorded  in  his  journal. 

'It  is  quite  true,'  said  David;  'it  seems  to  be  one  of  her 
sudden  schemes.  I  don't  see  any  particular  reason  for  it.  She 
says  she  must  "  put  matters  before  "  me,  and  that  Ce"cile  wants  a 
change.  I  don't  see  that  a  change  to  Manchester  in  February  is 
likely  to  help  the  poor  child  much.  No,  it  must  mean  more 
money.  We  must  make  up  our  minds  to  that,'  said  David  with  a 
little  sad  smile,  looking  at  his  wife. 

'  David  !  I  don't  see  that  you're  called  to  do  it  at  all  ! '  cried 
Lucy.  '  Why,  you've  done  much  more  for  her  than  anybody  else 
would  have  done  !  What  they  do  with  the  money  I  can't  think — 
dreadful  people ! ' 

She  began  to  pour  out  the  tea  with  vehemence  and  an  angry 
lip.  She  had  always  in  her  mind  that  vision  of  Louie,  as  she  had 
seen  her  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  her  life,  marching  up 
Market  Place  in  the  '  loud '  hat  and  the  black  and  scarlet  dress, 
stared  at  and  staring.  Nor  had  she  ever  lost  her  earliest  impres- 
sion of  strong  dislike  which  had  come  upon  her  immediately 
afterwards,  when  Louie  and  Eeuben  had  mounted  to  Dora's  sitting- 
room,  and  she,  Lucy,  had  angrily  told  the  quick-fingered,  bold- 
eyed  girl  who  claimed  to  be  David  Grieve's  sister  not  to  touch 
Dora's  work.  Nay,  every  year  since  had  but  intensified  it, 
especially  since  their  income  had  ceased  to  expand  rapidly,  and 
the  drain  of  the  Montjoies'  allowance  had  been  more  plainly  felt. 
She  might  have  begun  to  feel  a  little  ashamed  of  herself  that  she 
was  able  to  give  her  husband  so  little  sympathy  in  his  determina- 
tion to  share  his  gains  with  his  co-workers.  She  was  quite  clear 
that  she  was  right  in  resenting  the  wasting  of  his  money  on  such 
worthless  people  as  the  Montjoies.  It  was  disgusting  that  they 
should  sponge  upon  them  so — and  with  hardly  a  '  thank  you  '  all 
the  time.  Oh  dear,  no  ! — Louie  took  everything  as  her  right,  and 
had  once  abused  David  through  four  pages  because  his  cheque 
had  been  two  days  late. 

David  received  his  wife's  remarks  in  a  meditative  silence.    He 


CHAP,  v  MATURITY  491 

devoted  himself  a  while  to  Sandy,  who  was  eating  porridge  at  his 
right  hand,  and  tended  with  great  regularity  to  bestow  on  his 
pinafore  what  was  meant  for  his  mouth.  At  last  he  said,  pushing 
the  letter  over  to  Lucy  : 

'  You  had  better  read  it,  Lucy.    She  talks  of  coming  next  week. ' 

Lucy  read  it  with  mounting  wrath.  It  was  the  outcome  of  a 
fit  of  characteristic  violence.  Louie  declared  that  she  could  stand 
her  life  no  longer  ;  that  she  was  coming  over  to  put  things  before 
David  ;  and  if  he  couldn't  help  her,  she  and  her  child  would  just 
go  out  and  beg.  She  understood  from  an  old  Manchester 
acquaintance  whom  she  had  met  in  the  Eue  de  Rivoli  about  Christ- 
mas-time that  David  was  doing  very  well  with  his  business.  She 
wished  him  joy  of  it.  If  he  was  prosperous,  it  was  more  than  she 
was.  Nobody  ever  seemed  to  trouble  their  heads  about  her. 

'  Well,  I  never  I '  said  Lucy,  positively  choked.  '  Why,  it's  not 
much  more  than  a  month  since  you  sent  her  that  last  cheque, 
And  now  I  know  you'll  be  saying  you  can't  afford  yourself  a  new 
great-coat.  It's  disgraceful !  They'll  suck  you  dry,  those  kind  of 
people,  if  you  let  them.' 

She  had  taken  no  pains  so  far  to  curb  her  language  for  the 
sake  of  her  husband's  feelings.  But  as  she  gave  vent  to  the  last 
acid  phrase  she  felt  a  sudden  compunction.  For  David  was  looking 
straight  before  him  into  vacancy,  with  a  painful  intensity  in  the 
eyes,  and  a  curious  droop  and  contraction  of  the  mouth.  Why 
did  he  so  often  worry  himself  about  Louie  ?  He  had  done  all  he 
could,  anyway. 

She  got  up  and  went  over  to  him  with  his  tea.  He  woke  up 
from  his  absorption  and  thanked  her. 

'  Is  it  right  ? ' 

'  Just  right ! '  he  said,  tasting  it.  '  All  the  same,  Lucy,  it 
would  be  really  nice  of  you  to  be  kind  to  her  and  poor  little 
Cecile.  It  won't  be  easy  for  either  of  us  having  Louie  here.' 

He  began  to  cut  up  his  bread  with  sudden  haste,  then,  paus- 
ing again,  he  went  on  in  a  low  voice.  '  But  if  one  leaves  a  task 
like  that  undone  it  makes  a  sore  spot,  a  fester  in  the  mind.' 

She  went  back  to  the  place  in  silence. 

'  What  day  is  it  to  be  ? '  she  said  presently.  Certainly  they 
both  looked  dejected. 

'  The  16th,  isn't  it  ?  I  wonder  who  the  Manchester  acquaint- 
ance was.  He  must  have  given  a  rose-coloured  account.  We 
aren't  so  rich  as  all  that,  are  we,  wife  ? ' 

He  glanced  at  her  with  a  charming  half -apprehensive  smile, 
which  made  his  face  young  again.  Lucy  looked  ready  to  cry. 

'  I  know  you'll  get  out  of  buying  that  coat,'  she  said  with 
energy,  as  though  referring  to  an  already  familiar  topic  of  dis- 
cussion between  them. 

'  No,  I  won't,'  said  David  cheerfully.  '  I'll  buy  it  before  Louie 
comes,  if  that  will  please  you.  Oh,  we  shall  do,  dear  !  I've  had 
a  real  good  turn  at  the  shop  this  last  month.  Things  will  look 
better  this  quarter's  end,  you'll  see.' 


492  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'Why,  I  thought  you'd  been  so  busy  in  the  printing  office,' 
she  said,  a  good  deal  cheered,  however,  by  his  remark. 

'  So  we  have.  But  John's  a  brick,  and  doesn't  care  how  much 
he  does.  And  the  number  of  men  who  take  a  personal  interest 
in  the  house,  who  do  their  utmost  to  forward  work,  and  to  pre- 
vent waste  and  scamping,  is  growing  fast.  When  once  we  get 
the  apprentices'  school  into  full  working  order,  we  shall  see.' 

David  gave  himself  a  great  stretch ;  and  then,  thrusting  his 
hands  deep  into  his  pockets,  stood  by  the  fire  enjoying  it  and  his 
dreams  together. 

'  Has  it  begun  ? '  said  Lucy.  Her  tone  was  not  particularly 
cordial ;  but  anyone  who  knew  them  well  would  perhaps  have 
reflected  that  six  months  before  he  would  have  neither  made  his 
remark,  nor  she  have  asked  her  question. 

'  Yes — what  ? '  he  said  with  a  start.  '  Oh,  the  school !  It  has 
begun  tentatively.  Six  of  our  best  men  give  in  rotation  two 
hours  a  day  to  it  at  the  time  when  work  and  the  machines  are 
slackest.  And  we  have  one  or  two  teachers  from  outside. 
Twenty -three  boys  have  entered.  I  have  begun  to  pay  them  a 
penny  a  day  for  attendance. ' 

His  face  lit  up  with  merriment  as  though  he  anticipated  her 
remonstrance. 

'  David,  how  foolish  !  If  you  coax  them  like  that  they  won't 
care  a  bit  about  it.' 

'  Well,  the  experiment  has  been  tried  by  a  great  French  firm,' 
he  said,  '  and  it  did  well.  It  is  really  a  slight  addition  to  wages, 
and  pays  the  firm  in  the  end.  You  should  see  the  little  fellows 
hustle  up  for  their  money.  I  pay  it  them  every  month.' 

'  And  it  all  comes  out  of  your  pocket — that,  of  course,  I 
needn't  ask,'  said  Lucy.  But  her  sarcasm  was  not  bitter,  and  she 
had  a  motherly  eye  the  while  to  the  way  in  which  Sandy  was 
stuffing  himself  with  his  bread  and  jam. 

'Well,'  he  said,  laughing  and  making  no  attempt  to  excuse 
himself,  '  but  I  tell  you,  madam,  you  will  do  better  this  year.  I 
positively  must  make  some  money  out  of  the  shop  for  you  and 
myself  too.  So  I  have  been  going  at  it  like  twenty  horses,  and 
we've  sent  out  a  splendid  catalogue.' 

'  Oh,  I  say,  David  ! '  said  Lucy,  dismayed,  '  you're  not  going  to 
take  the  shop-money  too  to  spend  on  the  printing  ? ' 

'  I  won't  take  anything  that  will  leave  you  denuded,'  he  said 
affectionately ;  '  and  whenever  I  want  anything  I'll  tell  you  all 
about  it — if  you  like.' 

He  looked  at  her  significantly.  She  did  not  answer  for  a 
minute,  then  she  said  : 

'  Don't  you  want  me  to  give  those  boys  a  treat  some  time  ? ' 

'  Yes,  when  the  weather  gets  more  decent,  if  it  ever  does.  We 
must  give  them  a  day  on  the  moors — take  them  to  Clough  End 
perhaps.  Oh,  look  here  ! '  he  exclaimed  with  a  sudden  change  of 
tone,  '  let  us  ask  Uncle  Reuben  to  come  and  spend  the  day  to  see 
Louie  I ' 


CHAP,  v  MATURITY  493 

'  Why,  he  won't  leave  her,'  said  Lucy. 

'Who?  Aunt  Hannah?  Oh  yes,  he  will.  It's  wonderful 
what  she  can  do  now.  I  saw  her  in  November,  you  remember, 
when  I  went  to  see  Margaret.  It's  a  resurrection.  .  Poor  Uncle 
Keuben  ! ' 

'  What  do  you  mean  ? '  said  Lucy,  startled. 

'Well,'  said  David  slowly,  with  a  half  tender,  half  humorous 
twist  of  the  lip,  'he  can't  understand  it.  He  prayed  so  many 
years,  and  it  made  no  difference.  Then  came  a  new  doctor,  and 
with  electricity  and  rubbing  it  was  all  done.  Oh  yes,  Uncle 
Keuben  would  like  to  see  Louie.  And  I  want  to  show  him  that 
boy  there  ! ' 

He  nodded  at  Sandy,  who  sat  staring  open-mouthed  and  open- 
eyed  at  his  parents,  a  large  piece  of  bread  and  jam  slipping 
slowly  down  his  throat. 

'David,  you're  silly,'  said  Lucy.  But  she  went  to  stand  by 
him  at  the  fire,  and  slipped  her  hand  inside  his  arm.  '  I  suppose 
she  and  C6cile  had  better  have  the  front  room,'  she  went  on 
slowly. 

'  Yes,  that  would  be  the  most  cheerful.' 

Then  they  were  silent  a  little,  he  leaning  his  head  lightly 
against  hers. 

'Well,  I  must  go,'  he  said,  rousing  himself;  'I  shall  just 
catch  the  train.  Send  a  line  to  Ancrum,  there's  a  dear,  to  say  I 
will  go  and  see  him  to-night.  Four  months  !  I  am  afraid  he  has 
been  very  bad.' 

Lucy  stood  by  the  fire  a  little,  lost  in  many  contradictory  feel- 
ings. There  was  in  her  a  strange  sense  as  of  some  long  strain 
slowly  giving  way,  the  quiet  melting  of  some  old  hardness.  Ever 
since  that  autumn  time  when,  after  their  return  from  Benet's 
Park,  her  husband's  chivalry  and  delicacy  of  feeling  had  given 
back  to  her  the  self-respect  and  healed  the  self-love  which  had 
been  so  rudely  hurt,  there  had  been  a  certain  readjustment  of 
Lucy's  nature  going  on  below  the  little  commonplaces  and  vani- 
ties and  affections  of  her  life  which  she  herself  would  never  have 
been  able  to  explain.  It  implied  the  gradual  abandonment  of 
certain  ambitions,  the  relinquishment  bit  by  bit  of  an  arid  and 
fruitless  effort. 

She  would  stand  and  sigh  sometimes — long,  regretful  sighs 
like  a  child — for  she  knew  not  what.  But  David  would  have  his 
way,  and  it  was  no  good  ;  and  she  loved  him  and  Sandy. 

But  she  owed  no  love  to  Louie  Montjoie  !  It  was  a  relief  to 
her  now — an  escape  from  an  invading  sweetness  of  which  her 
little  heart  was  almost  afraid — to  sit  down  and  plan  how  she 
would  protect  David  from  that  grasping  woman  and  her  unspeak- 
able husband. 

'  David,  my  dear  fellow  ! '  said  Ancrum's  weak  voice. 
He  rose  with  difficulty  from  his  seat  by  the  fire.     The  room 
was  the  same  little  lodging-house  sitting-room  in  Mortimer  Road, 


494  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

•where  David  years  before  had  poured  out  his  boyish  account  of 
himself.  Neither  chiffonnier,  nor  pictures,  nor  antimacassars 
had  changed  at  all ;  the  bustling  landlady  was  still  loud  and 
vigorous.  But  Ancrum  was  a  shadow. 

'  You  are  better  ? '  David  said,  holding  his  hand  in  both  his. 

'  Oh  yes,  better  for  a  time.     Not  for  long,  thank  God  ! ' 

David  looked  at  him  with  painful  emotion.  Several  times 
during  these  eight  years  had  he  seen  Ancrum  emerge  from  these 
mysterious  crises  of  his,  a  broken  and  shattered  man,  whom  only 
the  force  of  a  superhuman  will  could  drag  back  to  life  and  work. 
But  he  had  never  yet  seen  him  so  beaten  down,  so  bloodless,  so 
emaciated  as  this.  Lung  mischief  had  declared  itself  more  than 
a  year  before  this  date,  and  had  clearly  made  progress  during  this 
last  attack  of  melancholia.  He  thought  to  himself  that  his  old 
friend  could  not  have  long  to  live. 

'  Has  Williams  been  to  see  you  ? '  he  asked,  naming  a  doctor 
whom  Ancrum  had  long  known  and  trusted. 

'  Oh  yes  !  He  can  do  nothing.  He  tells  me  to  give  in  and  go 
to  the  south.  But  there  is  a  little  work  left  in  me  still.  I  wanted 
my  boys.  I  grew  to  pine  for  my  boys — up  there. ' 

'  Up  there '  meant  that  house  in  Scotland  where  lived  the 
friends  bound  to  him  by  such  tragic  memories  of  help  asked  and 
rendered  in  a  man's  worst  extremity,  that  he  could  never  speak 
of  them  when  he  was  living  his  ordinary  life  in  Manchester,  pas- 
sionately as  he  loved  them. 

They  chatted  a  little  about  the  boys,  some  of  whom  David  had 
been  keeping  an  eye  on.  Five  or  six  of  them,  indeed,  were  in  his 
printing-office,  and  learning  in  the  apprentices'  school  he  had  just 
started. 

But  in  the  middle  of  their  talk,  with  a  sudden  change  of  look, 
Ancrum  stooped  forward  and  laid  his  hand  on  David's. 

'  A  little  more,  Davy — I  have  just  to  get  a  little  worse — and 
she  will  come  to  me.' 

David  was  not  sure  that  he  understood.  Ancrum  had  only 
spoken  of  his  wife  once  since  the  night  when,  led  on  by  sympathy 
and  emotion,  he  had  met  David's  young  confession  by  the  story 
of  his  own  fate.  She  was  still  teaching  at  Glasgow  so  far  as 
David  knew,  where  she  was  liked  and  respected. 

'  Yes,  Davy — when  I  have  come  to  the  end  of  my  tether — 
when  I  can  do  no  more  but  die — I  shall  call — and  she  will  come. 
It  has  so  far  killed  us  to  be  together — more  than  a  few  hours  in 
the  year.  But  when  life  is  all  over  for  me — she  will  be  kind — 
and  I  shall  be  able  to  forget  it  all.  Oh,  the  hours  I  have  sat  here 
thinking — thinking — and  gnashing  my  teeth  !  My  boys  think  me 
a  kind,  gentle,  harmless  creature,  Davy.  They  little  know  the 
passions  I  have  carried  within  me — passions  of  hate  and  bitter- 
ness— outcries  against  God  and  man.  But  there  has  been  One 
with  me  through  the  storms ' — his  voice  sank — '  aye  !  and  I  have 
gone  to  Him  again  and  again  with  the  old  cry — Master! — Master! 
— carest  Ttiou  not  that  we  perish  ? ' 


CHAP,  v  MATURITY  495 

His  drawn  grey  face  worked  and  he  mastered  himself  with 
difficulty.  David  held  his  hand  firm  and  close  in  a  silence  which 
carried  with  it  a  love  and  sympathy  not  to  be  expressed. 

'Let  me  just  say  this  to  you,  Davy,'  Ancrum  went  on  pres- 
ently, '  before  we  shut  the  door  on  this  kind  of  talk — for  when  a 
man  has  got  a  few  things  to  do  and  very  little  strength  to  do  'em 
with,  he  must  not  waste  himself.  You  may  hear  any  day  that  I 
have  been  received  into  the  Catholic  Church,  or  you  may  only 
hear  it  when  I  am  dying.  One  way  or  the  other,  you  urill  hear 
it.  It  has  been  strange  to  go  about  all  these  years  among  my 
Unitarian  and  dissenting  friends  and  to  know  that  this  would  be 
the  inevitable  end  of  it.  I  have  struggled  alone  for  peace  and 
certainty.  I  cannot  get  them  for  myself.  There  is  an  august, 
an  inconceivable  possibility  which  makes  my  heart  stand  still 
when  I  think  of  it,  that  the  Catholic  Church  may  verily  have 
them  to  give,  as  she  says  she  has.  I  am  weak — I  shall  submit — I 
shall  throw  myself  upon  her  breast  at  last.' 

'  But  why  not  now,'  said  David,  tenderly,  '  if  it  would  give  you 
comfort  ? ' 

Ancrum  did  not  answer  at  once  ;  he  sat  rubbing  his  hands 
restlessly  over  the  fire. 

'  I  don't  know — I  don't  know,'  he  said  at  last.  '  I  have  told 
you  what  the  end  will  be,  Davy.  But  the  will  still  nutters — 
flutters — in  my  poor  breast,  like  a  caged  thing.' 

Then  that  beautiful  half- wild  smile  of  his  lit  up  the  face. 

'  Bear  with  me,  you  strong  man  !  What  have  you  been  doing 
with  yourself?  How  many  more  courts  have  you  been  pulling 
down  ?  And  how  much  more  of  poor  Madam  Lucy's  money  have 
you  been  throwing  out  of  window  ? ' 

He  took  up  his  old  tone,  half  bantering,  half  affectionate,  and 
teased  David  out  of  the  history  of  the  last  six  months.  While  he 
sat  listening  he  reflected  once  more,  as  he  had  so  often  reflected, 
upon  the  difference  between  the  reality  of  David  Grieve's  life  as 
it  was  and  his,  Ancrum's,  former  imaginations  of  what  it  would 
be.  A  rapid  rise  to  wealth  and  a  new  social  status,  removal  to 
London,  a  great  public  career,  a  personality,  and  an  influence 
conspicuous  in  the  eyes  of  England — all  these  things  he  had  once 
dreamed  of  as  belonging  to  the  natural  order  of  David's  develop- 
ment. What  he  had  actually  witnessed  had  been  the  struggle  of 
a  hidden  life  to  realise  certain  ideal  aims  under  conditions  of 
familiar  difficulty  and  limitation,  the  dying  down  of  that  initial 
brilliance  and  passion  to  succeed,  into  a  wrestle  of  conscience  as 
sensitive  as  it  was  profound,  as  tenacious  as  it  was  scrupulous. 
He  had  watched  an  unsatisfactory  marriage,  had  realised  the 
silent  resolve  of  the  north-countryman  to  stand  by  his  own  people, 
of  the  man  sprung  from  the  poor  to  cling  to  the  poor  :  he  had 
become  familiar  with  the  veins  of  melancholy  by  which  both 
character  and  life  were  crossed.  That  glittering  prince  of  circum- 
stance as  he  had  once  foreseen  him,  was  still  enshrined  in  memory 
and  fancy  ;  but  the  real  man  was  knit  to  the  cripple's  inmost  heart. 


496  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Another  observer,  perhaps,  might  have  wondered  at  Ancrum's 
sense  of  difference  and  disillusion.  For  David  after  all  had  made 
a  mark.  As  he  sat  talking  to  Ancrum  of  the  new  buildings  behind 
the  printing-office  where  he  now  employed  from  two  to  three 
hundred  men,  of  the  ups  and  downs  of  his  profit-sharing  experi- 
ences, of  this  apprentices'  school  for  the  sons  of  members  of  the 
'  house,'  imitated  from  one  of  the  same  kind  founded  by  a  great 
French  printing  firm,  and  the  object  just  now  of  a  passionate 
energy  of  work  on  David's  part — or  as  he  diverged  into  the  history 
of  an  important  trade  dispute  in  Manchester,  where  he  had  been 
appointed  arbitrator  by  the  unanimous  voice  of  both  sides — as  he 
told  these  things,  it  was  not  doubtful  even  for  Ancrum  that  his 
power  and  consideration  were  spreading  in  his  own  town. 

But,  substantially,  Ancrum  was  right.  Hard  labour  and 
natural  gift  had  secured  their  harvest ;  but  that  vivid  personal 
element  in  success  which  captivates  and  excites  the  bystander 
seemed,  in  David's  case,  to  have  been  replaced  by  something 
austere,  which  pointed  attention  and  sympathy  rather  to  the 
man's  work  than  to  himself.  When  he  was  young  there  had  been 
intoxication  for  such  a  spectator  as  Ancrum  in  the  magical 
rapidity  and  ease  with  which  he  seized  opportunity  and  beat  down 
difficulty.  Now  that  he  was  mature,  he  was  but  one  patient  toiler 
the  more  at  the  eternal  puzzles  of  our  humanity. 

Ancrum  let  him  talk  awhile.  He  had  always  felt  a  certain 
interest  in  David's  schemes,  though  they  were  not  of  a  quality 
and  sort  with  which  a  mind  like  his  naturally  concerned  itself. 
But  his  interest  now  could  not  hold  out  so  long  as  once  it 
could. 

'  Ah,  that  will  do — that  will  do,  dear  fellow  ! '  he  said,  inter- 
rupting and  touching  David's  hand  with  apologetic  affection.  '  I 
seem  to  feel  your  pulse  beating  150  to  the  minute,  and  it  tires  me 
so  I  can't  bear  myself.  Gossip  to  me.  How  is  Sandy  ? ' 

David  laughed,  and  had  as  usual  a  new  batch  of  '  Sandiana ' 
to  produce.  Then  he  talked  of  Louie's  coming  and  of  the  invita- 
tion which  had  been  sent  to  Reuben  Grieve. 

'  I  shall  come  and  sit  in  a  corner  and  look  at  her,'  said 
Ancrum,  nodding  at  Louie's  name.  '  What  sort  of  a  life  has  she 
been  leading  all  these  years  ?  Neither  you  nor  I  can  much 
imagine.  But  what  beauty  it  used  to  be  !  How  will  John  stand 
seeing  her  again  ? ' 

David  smiled,  but  did  not  think  it  would  affect  John  very 
greatly.  He  was  absorbed  in  the  business  of  Grieve  &  Co.,  and 
no  less  round,  roseate,  and  trusty  than  he  had  always  been. 

'  Well,  good  night — good  night ! '  said  Ancrum,  and  seemed  to 
be  looking  at  the  clock  uneasily.  '  Come  again,  Davy,  and  I  dare 
say  I  shall  struggle  up  to  you.' 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened,  and,  in  spite  of  a  hasty  shout 
from  Ancrum,  which  she  did  not  or  would  not  understand,  Mrs. 
Elsley,  his  landlady,  came  into  the  room,  bearing  his  supper.  She 
put  down  the  tray,  seemed  to  invite  David's  attention  to  it  by  her 


CHAP,  v  MATURITY  497 

indignant  look,  and  flounced  out  again  like  one  bursting  with 
forbidden  speech. 

'  Ancrum,  this  is  absurd  1 '  cried  David,  pointing  to  the  tea 
and  morsel  of  dry  bread  which  were  to  provide  this  shrunken 
invalid  with  his  evening  meal.  '  You  can't  live  on  this  stuff 
now,  you  know — you  want  something  more  tempting  and  more 
nourishing.  Do  be  rational ! ' 

Ancrum  sprang  up,  hobbled  with  unusual  alacrity  across  the 
roott,  and,  laying  hold  of  David,  made  a  feint  of  ejecting  his 
visitor. 

'  You  get  along  and  leave  me  to  my  wittles  ! '  he  said  with  the 
smile  of  a  schoolboy  ;  '  I  don't  spy  on  you  when  you're  at  your 
meals.' 

David  crossed  his  arms. 

'  I  shall  have  to  send  Lucy  down  every  morning  to  housekeep 
with  Mrs.  Elsley,'  he  said  firmly. 

'  Now,  David,  hold  your  tongue  !  I  couldn't  eat  anything  else 
if  I  tried.  And  there  are  two  boys  down  with  typhoid  in  Friar's 
Yard— drat  'em ! — and  scarcely  a  rag  on  'em  :  don't  you  under- 
stand ?  And  besides,  David,  if  she  comes,  I  shall  want  a  pound 
or  two,  you  see  ? ' 

He  did  not  look  at  his  visitor's  face  nor  let  his  own  be  seen. 
He  simply  pushed  David  through  the  door  and  shut  it. 

'  Sandy,  they're  just  come  ! '  cried  Lucy  in  some  excitement, 
hugging  the  child  to  her  by  way  of  a  last  pleasant  experience 
before  the  advent  of  her  sister-in-law.  Then  she  put  the  child 
down  on  the  sofa  and  went  out  to  meet  the  new-comers. 

Sandy  sucked  a  meditative  thumb,  putting  his  face  to  the 
window,  and  surveyed  the  arrival  which  was  going  on  in  the 
front  garden.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  noise  and  talking ;  the 
lady  in  the  grey  cloak  was  scolding  the  cabman,  and  'Daddy' 
was  taking  her  bags  and  parcels  from  her,  and  trying  to  make 
her  come  in.  On  the  steps  stood  a  little  girl  looking  frightened 
and  tired.  Sandy  twisted  his  head  round  and  studied  her  care- 
fully. But  he  showed  no  signs  of  running  out  to  meet  her.  She 
might  be  nice,  or  she  might  be  nasty.  Sandy  had  a  cautious 
philosophical  way  with  him  towards  novelties.  He  remained 
perfectly  still  with  his  cheek  pressed  against  the  glass. 

The  door  opened.  In  came  Louie,  with  Lucy  looking  already 
flushed  and  angry  behind  her,  and  David,  last  of  all,  holding 
Cecile  by  the  hand. 

Louie  was  in  the  midst  of  denunciations  of  the  cabman,  who 
had,  according  to  her,  absorbed  into  his  system,  or  handed  over 
to  an  accomplice  on  the  way,  a  bandbox  which  had  certainly  been 
put  in  at  St.  Pancras,  and  which  contained  Cecile's  best  hat.  She 
was  red  and  furious,  and  David  felt  himself  as  much  attacked  as 
the  cabman,  for  to  the  best  of  his  ability  he  had  transferred  them 
and  their  packages,  at  the  Midland  station,  from  the  train  to  the  cab. 

In  the  midst  of  her  tirade,  however,  she  suddenly  stopped 


498  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IT 

short  and  looked  round  the  room  she  had  just  entered — Lucy's 
low  comfortable  sitting-room,  with  David's  books  overflowing  into 
every  nook  and  corner,  the  tea-table  spread,  and  the  big  fire 
which  Lucy  had  been  nervously  feeding  during  her  time  of 
waiting  for  the  travellers. 

'Well,  you've  got  a  fire,  anyway,'  she  said,  brusquely.  'I 
thought  you'd  have  a  bigger  house  than  this  by  now.' 

'  Oh,  thank  you,  it's  quite  big  enough  ! '  cried  Lucy,  going  to 
the  tea-table  and  holding  herself  very  straight.  '  Quite  big 
enough  for  anything  we  want !  Will  you  take  your  tea  ? ' 

Louie  threw  herself  into  an  armchair  and  looked  about  her. 

'  Where's  the  little  boy?'  she  inquired. 

'  I'm  here,'  said  a  small  solemn  voice  from  behind  the  sofa, 
1  but  I'm  not  your  boy.' 

And  Sandy,  discovered  with  his  back  to  the  window,  replaced 
the  thumb  which  he  had  removed  to  make  the  remark,  and  went 
on  staring  with  portentous  gravity  at  the  new-comers.  C6cile 
had  nervously  disengaged  herself  from  David  and  was  standing 
by  her  mother. 

'  Why,  he's  small  for  his  age  ! '  exclaimed  Louie ;  '  I'm  sure 
he's  small  for  his  age.  Why,  he's  nearly  five  1 ' 

'Come  here,  Sandy,'  said  David,  'and  let  your  aunt  and 
cousin  look  at  you.  * 

Sandy  reluctantly  sidled  across  the  room  so  as  to  keep  as  far 
as  possible  from  his  aunt  and  cousin,  and  fastened  on  his  father's 
hand.  He  and  the  little  girl  looked  at  one  another. 

'  Go  and  kiss  her,'  said  David. 

Sandy  most  unwillingly  allowed  himself  to  be  put  forward. 
Oecile  with  a  little  patronising  woman-of-the-world  air  stooped 
and  kissed  him  first  on  one  cheek  and  then  on  the  other.  Louie 
only  looked  at  him.  Her  black  eyes — no  less  marvellous  than  of 
yore,  although  now  the  brilliancy  of  them  owed  something  to  art 
as  well  as  nature,  as  Lucy  at  once  perceived — stared  him  up  and 
down,  taking  stock  minutely. 

'  He's  well  made,'  she  said  grudgingly,  'and  his  colour  isn't 
bad.  Cecile,  take  your  hat  off.' 

The  child  obeyed,  and  the  mother  with  hasty  fingers  pulled 
her  hair  forward  here,  and  put  it  back  there.  'Look  at  the 
thickness  of  it,'  she  said,  proudly  pointing  it  out  to  David. 
'  They'd  have  given  me  two  guineas  for  it  in  the  Kue  de  la  Paix 
the  other  day.  Why  didn't  that  child  have  your  hair,  I  wonder  ? ' 
she  added,  nodding  towards  Sandy. 

'  Because  he  preferred  his  mother's,  I  suppose,'  said  David, 
smiling  at  Lucy,  and  wondering  through  his  discomfort  what 
Sandy  could  possibly  be  doing  with  his  coat-tail.  He  seemed  to 
be  elaborately  scrubbing  his  face  with  it. 

'  What  are  you  doing  with  my  coat,  villain  ? '  he  said,  lifting 
his  son  in  his  arms. 

Sandy  found  his  father's  ear,  and  with  infinite  precaution 
whispered  vindictively  into  it : 


CHAP,  v  MATURITY  i  499 

'  I've  wiped  them  kisses  off  anyhow.' 

David  suppressed  him,  and  devoted  himself  to  the  travellers 
and  their  tea. 

Every  now  and  then  he  took  a  quiet  look  at  his  sister.  Louie 
was  in  some  ways  more  beautiful  than  ever.  She  carried  herself 
magnificently,  and  as  she  sat  at  the  tea-table — restless  always — 
she  fell  unconsciously  into  one  fine  attitude  after  another,  no 
doubt  because  of  her  long  practice  as  a  sculptor's  model.  All  the 
girl's  awkwardness  had  disappeared ;  she  had  the  insolent  ease 
which  goes  with  tried  and  conscious  power.  But  with  the  angu- 
larity and  thinness  of  first  youth  had  gone  also  that  wild  and 
startling  radiance  which  Montjoie  had  caught  and  fixed  in  the 
Maenad  statue — the  one  enduring  work  of  a  ruined  talent,  now  to 
be  found  in  the  Luxembourg  by  anyone  who  cares  to  look  for  it. 
Her  beauty  was  less  original ;  it  had  taken  throughout  the  second- 
rate  Parisian  stamp  ;  she  had  the  townswoman's  pallor,  as  com- 
pared with  the  moorland  red  and  white  of  her  youth  ;  and  round 
the  eyes  and  mouth  in  a  full  daylight  were  already  to  be  seen 
the  lines  which  grave  the  history  of  passionate  and  selfish  living. 

But  if  her  beauty  was  less  original,  it  was  infinitely  more 
finished.  Lucy  beside  her  stumbled,  among  the  cups,  and  grew 
more  and  more  self-conscious  ;  she  had  felt  much  the  same  at 
Benet's  Park  beside  Lady  Venetia  Danby  ;  only  here  there  was 
a  strong  personal  animosity  and  disapproval  fighting  with  the 
disagreeable  sense  of  being  outshone. 

She  left  almost  all  the  talk  to  her  husband,  and  employed 
herself  in  looking  after  Cecile.  David,  who  had  left  his  work 
with  difficulty  to  meet  his  sister,  did  his  best  to  keep  her  going  on 
indifferent  subjects,  wondering  the  while  what  it  was  that  she  had 
come  all  this  way  to  say  to  him,  and  perfectly  aware  that  her 
sharp  eyes  were  in  every  place,  taking  a  depreciatory  inventory 
of  his  property,  his  household,  and  his  circumstances. 

Suddenly  Louie  said  something  to  Cecile  in  violent  French. 
It  was  to  the  effect  that  she  was  to  hold  herself  up  and  not  stoop 
like  an  idiot. 

The  child,  who  was  shyly  eating  her  tea,  flushed  all  over,  and 
drew  herself  up  with  painful  alacrity.  Louie  went  on  with  a 
loud  account  of  the  civility  shown  her  by  some  gentlemen  on  the 
Paris  boat  and  on  the  journey  from  Dover.  In  the  middle  of  it 
she  stopped  short,  her  eye  flamed,  she  bent  forward  with  the 
rapidity  of  a  cat  that  springs,  and  slapped  Cecile  smartly  on  the 
right  cheek. 

'  I  was  watching  you  ! '  she  cried.  '  Are  you  never  going  to 
obey  me — do  you  think  I  am  going  to  drag  a  hunchback  about 
with  me  ? ' 

Both  David  and  Lucy  started  forward.  Cecile  dropped  her 
bread  and  butter  and  began  to  cry  in  a  loud,  shrill  voice,  hitting 
out  meanwhile  at  her  mother  with  her  tiny  hands  in  a  frenzy  of 
rage  and  fear.  Sandy,  frightened  out  of  his  wits,  set  up  a  loud 
howl  also,  till  his  mother  caught  him  up  and  carried  him  away. 


500  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  Louie,  the  child  is  tired  out ! '  said  David,  trying  to  quiet 
C^cile  and  dry  her  tears.  '  What  was  that  for  ? ' 

Louie's  chest  heaved. 

'  Because  she  won't  do  what  I  tell  her,'  she  said  fiercely. 
'  What  am  I  to  do  with  her  when  she  grows  up  ?  Who'll  ever 
look  at  her  twice  ? ' 

She  scowled  at  the  child  who  had  taken  refuge  on  David's 
knee,  then  with  a  sudden  change  of  expression  she  held  out  her 
arms,  and  said  imperiously  : 

'Give  her  to  me.' 

David  relinquished  her,  and  the  mother  took  the  little  trem- 
bling creature  on  her  knee. 

'  Be  quiet  then,'  she  said  to  her  roughly,  always  in  French,  '  I 
didn't  hurt  you.  There  !  Veux-tu  du  gateau  f ' 

She  cut  some  with  eager  fingers  and  held  it  to  Cecile's  lips. 
The  child  turned  away,  silently  refusing  it,  the  tears  rolling  down 
her  cheeks.  The  mother  devoured  her  with  eyes  of  remorse  and 
adoration,  while  her  face  was  still  red  with  anger. 

'  Dis-moi,  you  don't  feel  anything  ? '  she  said,  kissing  her 
hungrily.  '  Are  you  tired  ?  Shall  I  carry  you  upstairs  and  put 
you  on  the  bed  to  rest  ? ' 

And  she  did  carry  her  up,  not  allowing  David  to  touch  her. 
When  they  were  at  last  safe  in  their  own  room,  David  came  down 
to  his  study  and  threw  himself  into  his  chair  in  the  dark  with  a 
groan. 

CHAPTER  VI 

LOUIE  and  her  child  entered  the  sitting-room  together  when  the 
bell  rang  for  supper-tea.  Louie  had  put  on  a  high  red  silk  dress 
of  a  brilliant,  almost  scarlet,  tone,  which  showed  her  arms  from 
the  elbows  and  was  very  slightly  clouded  here  and  there  with 
black  ;  Cecile  crept  beside  her,  a  little  pale  shadow,  in  a  white 
muslin  frock,  adorned,  however,  as  Lucy's  vigilant  eyes  imme- 
diately perceived,  with  some  very  dainty  and  expensive  embroidery. 
The  mother's  dress  reminded  her  of  that  in  which  she  first  saw 
Louie  Grieve  ;  so  did  her  splendid  and  reckless  carriage  ;  so  did 
the  wild  play  of  her  black  eyes,  always  on  the  watch  for  oppor- 
tunities of  explosion  and  offence.  How  did  they  get  their  dresses  ? 
Who  paid  for  them  ?  And  now  they  had  come  over  to  beg  for 
more  !  Lucy  could  hardly  keep  a  civil  tongue  in  her  head  at  all, 
as  her  sister-in-law  swept  round  the  room  making  strong  and,  to 
the  mistress  of  the  house,  cutting  remarks  on  the  difference 
between  'Manchester  dirt'  and  the  brightness  and  cleanliness 
of  Paris.  Why,  she  lorded  it  over  them  as  though  the  place 
belonged  to  her  !  '  And  she  is  just  a  pauper — living  on  what  we 
give  her ! '  thought  Lucy  to  herself  with  exasperation. 

After  supper,  at  which  Louie  behaved  with  the  same  inde- 
finable insolence — whether  as  regarded  the  food  or  the  china,  or 
the  shaky  moderator  lamp,  a  relic  from  David's  earliest  bachelor 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  501 

days,  which  only  he  could  coax  into  satisfactory  burning— Lucy 
made  the  move,  and  said  to  her  with  cold  constraint : 

'  Will  you  come  into  the  drawing-room  ? — David  has  a  pipe  in 
the  study  after  dinner.' 

'I  want  to  speak  to  David,'  said  Louie,  pushing  back  her 
chair  with  noisy  decision.  '  I'll  go  with  him.  He  can  smoke  as 
much  as  he  likes — I'm  used  to  it.' 

'  Well,  then,  come  into  my  study,'  said  David,  trying  to  speak 
cheerfully.  '  Lucy  will  look  after  Ce'cile.' 

To  Louie's  evident  triumph  Cecile  made  difficulties  about 
going  with  her  aunt,  but  was  at  last  persuaded  by  the  prospect 
of  seeing  Sandy  in  bed.  She  had  already  shown  signs  in  her 
curious  frightened  way  of  a  considerable  interest  in  Sandy. 

Then  David  led  the  way  to  the  study.  He  put  his  sister  into 
his  armchair  and  stood  pipe  in  hand  beside  her,  looking  down 
upon  her.  In  his  heart  there  was  the  passionate  self-accusing 
sense  that  he  could  not  feel  pity,  or  affection,  or  remorse  for  the 
past  when  she  was  there  ;  every  look  and  word  roused  in  him  the 
old  irritation,  the  old  wish  to  master  her,  he  had  known  so  often 
in  his  youth.  Yet  he  drew  himself  together,  striving  to  do  his 
best. 

'Well,  now,  look  here,'  said  Louie  defiantly,  'I  want  some 
money.' 

'  So  I  supposed,'  he  said  quietly,  lighting  his  pipe. 

Louie  reddened. 

*  Well,  and  if  I  do  want  it,'  she  said,  breathing  quickly,  '  I've 
a  right  to  want  it.  You  chose  to  waste  all  that  money — all  my 
money — on  that  marrying  business,  and  you  must  take  the 
consequence.  I  look  upon  it  this  way — you  promised  to  put 
my  money  into  your  trade  and  give  me  a  fair  share  of  your 
profits.  Then  you  chucked  it  away — you  made  me  spend  it  all, 
and  now,  of  course,  I'm  to  have  nothing  to  say  to  your  profits. 
Oh  dear,  no !  It's  a  trifle  that  I'm  a  pauper  and  you're  rolling 
in  money  compared  to  me  anyway.  Oh  I  it  doesn't  matter 
nothing  to  nobody — not  at  all !  All  the  same  you  couldn't  have 
made  the  start  you  did — not  those  few  months  I  was  with  you — 
without  my  money.  Why  can't  you  confess  it,  I  want  to  know — 
and  behave  more  handsome  to  me  now — instead  of  leaving  me  in 
that  state  that  I  haven't  a  franc  to  bless  myself  with  ! ' 

She  threw  herself  back  in  her  chair,  with  one  arm  flung 
behind  her  head.  David  stared  at  her  tongue-tied  for  a  while  by 
sheer  amazement. 

'  I  gave  you  everything  I  had,'  he  said,  at  last,  with  a  slow 
distinctness,  '  all  your  money,  and  all  my  own  too.  When  I 
came  back  here,  I  had  my  new  stock,  it  is  true,  but  it  was  much 
of  it  unpaid  for.  My  first  struggle  was  to  get  my  neck  out  of 
debt.' 

He  paused,  shrinking  with  a  kind  of  sick  repulsion  from  the 
memory  of  that  bygone  year  of  shattered  nerves  and  anguished 
effort.  Deliberately  he  let  thought  and  speech  of  it  drop. 


502  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Louie  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  whom  he  could  talk 
of  it. 

'  I  built  up  my  business  again,'  he  resumed,  '  by  degrees. 
Mr.  Doyle  lent  me  money — it  was  on  that  capital  I  first  began  to 
thrive.  From  the  very  beginning,  even  in  the  very  year  when  I 
handed  over  to  you  all  our  father's  money — I  sent  you  more. 
And  every  year  since — you  know  as  well  as  I  do — ' 

But  again  he  looked  away  and  paused.  Once  more  he  felt 
himself  on  a  wrong  tack.  What  was  the  use  of  laying  out,  so 
to  speak,  all  that  he  had  done  in  the  sight  of  these  angry  eyes  ? 
Besides,  a  certain  high  pride  restrained  him. 

Louie  looked  a  trifle  disconcerted,  and  her  flush  deepened. 
Her  audacious  attempt  to  put  him  in  the  wrong  and  provide 
herself  with  a  grievance  could  not  be  carried  on.  She  took 
refuge  in  passion. 

'  Oh,  I  dare  say  you  think  you've  done  a  precious  lot  1 '  she 
said,  sitting  straight  up  and  locking  her  hands  round  her  knee, 
while  the  whole  frame  of  her  stiffened  and  quivered.  '  I  suppose 
you  think  other  people  would  think  so  too.  I  don't  care  1  It 
don't  matter  to  me.  You're  the  only  belonging  I've  got — who 
else  was  there  for  me  to  look  to  ?  Oh,  it  is  all  very  fine  !  All  I 
know  is,  I  can't  stand  my  life  any  more  !  If  you  can't  do  any- 
thing, I'll  just  pack  up  my  traps  and  go.  Somebody  '11  have  to 
make  it  easier  for  me,  that's  all !  Last  week — I  was  out  of  the 
house — he  found  out  where  I  kept  my  money,  he  broke  the  lock 
open,  and  when  I  got  home  there  was  nothing.  Nothing,  I  tell 
you! '  Her  voice  rose  to  a  shrillness  that  made  David  look  to  see 
that  the  door  between  them  and  Lucy  was  securely  closed. 
'  And  I'd  promised  a  whole  lot  of  things  to  the  church  for 
Easter,  and  C6cile  and  I  haven't  got  a  rag  between  us  ;  and  as  for 
the  rent,  the  landlord  may  whistle  for  it !  Oh  !  the  beast ! '  she 
said,  between  her  teeth,  while  the  fierce  tears  stood  in  her  eyes. 

Lucy — any  woman  of  normal  shrewdness,  putting  two  and 
two  together — would  have  allowed  these  complaints  about  half 
their  claimed  weight.  Upon  David — unconsciously  inclined  to 
measure  all  emotion  by  his  own  standard — they  produced  an 
immediate  and  deep  impression. 

'  You  poor  thing  ! '  he  murmured,  as  he  stood  looking  down 
upon  her. 

She  tossed  her  head,  as  though  resenting  his  compassion. 

'  Yes,  I'm  about  tired  of  it !  I  thought  I'd  come  over  and 
tell  you  that.  Now  you  know, — and  if  you  hear  things  you  don't 
like,  don't  blame  me,  that's  all ! ' 

Her  great  eyes  blazed  into  his.  He  understood  her.  Her 
child — the  priests — had,  so  far,  restrained  her.  Now — what 
strange  mixture  of  shameless  impulse — curiosity,  greed,  reckless 
despair — had  driven  her  here  that  she  might  threaten  him  thus  ! 

'  Ah,  I  dare  say  you  think  I've  had  a  gay  life  of  it  over  there 
with  your  money,'  she  went  on,  not  allowing  him  to  speak.  '  My 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  503 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders,  with  a  scornful  laugh,  while  the 
tempest  gathered  within  her. 

4  Don't  I  know  perfectly  that  for  years  I  have  been  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  women  in  Paris  !  Ask  the  men  who  .have  painted 
me  for  the  Salon — ask  that  brute  who  might  have  made  a  for- 
tune out  of  me  if  he  hadn't  been  the  sot  he  is  !  And  what  have 
I  got  by  it  ?  What  do  other  women  who  are  not  a  tenth  part  as 
good-looking  as  I  am  get  by  it  ?  A  comfortable  life,  anyway  1 
Eh  bien  !  essay ons  ! — nous  aussi^ 

The  look  she  flung  at  him  choked  the  words  on  his  lips. 

'  When  I  think  of  these  ten  years,'  she  cried,  '  I  just  wonder 
at  myself.  There, — what  you  think  about  it  I  don't  know,  and  I 
don't  care.  I  might  have  had  a  good  time,  and  I've  had  a  devil's 
time.  And,  upon  my  word,  I  think  I'll  make  a  change  ! ' 

In  her  wild  excitement  she  sprang  up  and  began  to  pace  the 
narrow  room. 

David  watched  her,  fighting  with  himself,  and  with  that 
inbred  antipathy  of  temperament  which  seemed  to  paralyse  both 
\vill  and  judgment.  Was  the  secret  of  it  that  in  their  profound 
unlikeness  they  were  yet  so  much  alike  ? 

Then  he  went  up  to  her  and  made  her  sit  down  again. 

'Let  me  have  a  word  now,'  he  said  quietly,  though  his  hand 
as  it  gripped  hers  had  a  force  of  which  he  was  unconscious. 
'  You  say  you  wonder  at  yourself.  Well,  I  can  tell  you  this : 
other  people  have  wondered  too  !  When  I  left  you  in  Paris  ten 
years  ago,  I  tell  you  frankly,  I  had  no  hopes.  I  said  to  myself — 
don't  rage  at  me  ! — with  that  way  of  looking  at  things,  and  with 
such  a  husband,  what  chance  is  there?  And  for  some  years 
now,  Louie,  I  confess  to  you,  I  have  been  simply  humbled  and 
amazed  to  see  what — what ' — his  voice  sank  and  shook — '  love 
— and  the  fear  of  God — can  do.  It  has  been  hard  to  be  miserable 
and  poor — I  know  that — but  you  have  cared  for  Cecile,  and  you 
have  feared  to  shut  yourself  out  from  good  people  who  spoke  to 
you  in  God's  name.  Don't  do  yourself  injustice.  Believe  in 
yourself.  Look  back  upon  these  years  and  be  thankful.  With 
all  their  miseries  they  have  been  a  kind  of  victory  !  Will  you 
throw  them  away  now  ?  But  your  child  is  growing  up  and  will 
understand.  And  there  are  hands  to  help — mine,  always — always.' 

He  held  out  his  to  her,  smiling.  He  could  not  have  analysed 
his  own  impulse — this  strange  impulse  which  had  led  him  to 
bless  instead  of  cursing.  But  its  effect  upon  Louie  was  startling. 
She  had  looked  for,  perhaps  in  her  fighting  mood  she  had  ar- 
dently desired,  an  outburst  of  condemnation,  against  which  her 
mad  pleasure  in  the  sound  of  her  own  woes  and  hatreds  might 
once  more  spend  itself.  And  instead  of  blaming  and  reproaching 
he  had — 

She  stared  at  him.  Then  with  a  sudden  giving  way,  which 
was  a  matter  partly  of  nerves  and  partly  of  surprise,  she  let  her 
two  arms  fall  upon  the  edge  of  the  chair,  and  dropping  her  head 
upon  them,  burst  out  into  wild  sobbing. 


504  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  rv 

His  own  eyes  were  wet.  He  soothed  her  hurriedly  and  inco- 
herently, told  her  he  would  spare  her  all  the  money  he  could  ; 
that  he  and  Lucy  would  do  their  best,  but  that  she  must  not 
suppose  they  were  very  rich.  He  did  not  regard  all  his  money 
as  his  own. 

He  went  on  to  explain  to  her  something  of  his  business  posi- 
tion. Her  sobbing  slackened  and  ceased.  And  presently,  his 
mood  changing  instinctively  with  hers,  he  became  more  vague 
and  cautious  in  statement ;  his  tone  veered  back  towards  that 
which  he  was  accustomed  to  use  to  her.  For,  once  her  burst  of 
passion  over,  he  felt  immediately  that  she  was  once  more  criticis- 
ing everything  that  he  said  and  did  in  her  own  interest. 

'Oh,  I  know  you've  become  a  regular  Communist,'  she  said 
sullenly  at  last,  drying  her  eyes  in  haste.  '  Well,  I  tell  you,  I 
must  have  a  hundred  pounds.  I  can't  do  with  a  penny  less  than 
that.' 

He  tried  to  get  out  of  her  for  what  precise  purposes  she 
wanted  it,  and  whether  her  husband  had  stolen  from  her  the 
whole  of  the  quarter's  allowance  he  had  just  sent  her.  She 
answered  evasively  ;  he  felt  that  she  was  telling  him  falsehoods  ; 
and  once  more  his  heart  grew  dry  within  him. 

'  Well,'  he  said  at  last  with  a  certain  decision,  '  I  will  do  it  if 
I  can,  and  I  think  I  can  do  it.  But,  Louie,  understand  that  I 
have  got  Lucy  and  the  child  to  think  for,  that  I  am  not  alone.' 

'  I  should  think  she  had  got  more  than  she  could  expect ! ' 
cried  Louie,  putting  her  hair  straight  with  trembling  hands. 

His  cheek  flushed  at  the  sneer,  but  before  he  could  reply  she 
said  abruptly : 

'  Have  you  ever  told  her  about  Paris  ? ' 

'  No,'  he  said,  with  equal  abruptness,  his  mouth  taking  a  stern 
line,  '  and  unless  I  am  forced  to  do  so  I  never  shall.  That  you 
understand,  I  know,  for  I  spoke  to  you  about  it  in  Paris.  My 
past  died  for  me  when  I  asked  Lucy  to  be  my  wife.  I  do  not  ask 
you  to  remember  this.  I  take  it  for  granted.' 

'I  saw  that  woman  the  other  day,'  said  Louie  with  a  strange 
smile,  as  she  sat  staring  into  the  fire. 

He  started,  but  he  did  not  reply.  He  went  to  straighten  some 
papers  on  his  table.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  did  not  want  her 
to  say  a  word  more,  and  yet  he  listened  for  it. 

'  I  remember  they  used  to  call  her  pretty,'  said  Louie,  a  hate- 
ful scorn  shining  in  her  still  reddened  eyes.  '  She  is  just  a  little 
frump  now — nobody  would  ever  look  at  her  twice.  They  say  her 
husband  leads  her  a  life.  He  poisoned  himself  at  an  operation 
and  has  gone  half  crippled.  She  has  to  keep  them  both.  She 
doesn't  give  herself  the  airs  she  used  to,  anyway.' 

David  could  bear  it  no  longer. 

'I  think  you  had  better  go  and  take  Cecile  to  bed,'  he  said 
peremptorily.  '  I  heard  it  strike  nine  a  few  minutes  ago.  I  will 
go  and  talk  business  to  Lucy.' 

She  went  with  a  careless  air.    As  he  saw  her  shut  the  door 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  505 

his  heart  felt  once  more  dead  and  heavy.  A  few  minutes  before 
there  had  been  the  flutter  of  a  divine  presence  between  them. 
Now  he  felt  nothing  but  the  iron  grip  of  character  and  life.  And 
that  little  picture  which  her  last  words  had  left  upon  the  mind — 
it  carried  with  it  a  shock  and  dreariness  he  could  only  escape  by 
hard  work,,  that  best  medicine  of  the  soul.  He  went  out  early 
next  morning  to  his  printing-office,  spent  himself  passionately 
upon  a  day  of  difficulties,  and  came  back  refreshed. 

For  the  rest,  he  talked  to  Lucy,  and  with  great  difficulty 
persuaded  her  in  the  matter  of  the  hundred  pounds.  Lucy's 
indignation  may  be  taken  for  granted,  and  the  angry  proofs  she 
heaped  on  David  that  Louie  was  an  extravagant  story-telling 
hussy,  who  spent  everything  she  could  get  on  dress  and  personal 
luxury. 

'  Why,  her  dressing-table  is  like  a  perfumer's  shop  ! '  she  cried 
in  her  wrath  ;  '  what  she  does  with  all  the  messes  I  can't  imagine 
— makes  herself  beautiful,  I  suppose  !  Why  should  we  pay  for  it 
all  ?  And  I  tell  you  she  has  got  a  necklace  of  real  pearls.  I  know 
they  are  real,  for  she  told  Lizzie '  (Lizzie  was  the  boy's  nurse) 
t4that  she  always  took  them  about  with  her  to  keep  them  safe  out 
of  her  husband's  clutches — just  imagine  her  talking  to  the  girl 
like  that !  When  will'  you  be  able  to  give  me  real  pearls,  and 
where  do  you  suppose  she  got  them  ? ' 

David  preferred  not  to  inquire.  What  could  he  do,  he  asked 
himself  in  despair — what  even  could  he  know,  unless  Louie  chose 
that  he  should  know  it  ?  But  she,  on  the  contrary,  carefully 
avoided  the  least  recurrence  to  the  threats  of  her  first  talk  with 
him. 

Ultimately,  however,  he  brought  his  wife  round,  and  Louie 
was  informed  that  she  could  have  her  hundred  pounds,  which 
should  be  paid  her  on  the  day  of  her  departure,  but  that  nothing 
more,  beyond  her  allowance,  could  or  should  be  given  her  during 
the  current  year. 

She  took  the  promise  very  coolly,  but  certainly  made  herself 
more  agreeable  after  it  was  given.  She  dressed  up  C6cile  and  set 
her  dancing  in  the  evenings,  weird  dances  of  a  Spanish  type, 
alternating  between  languor  and  a  sort  of  'possession,'  which 
had  been  taught  the  child  by  a  moustached  violinist  from  Madrid, 
who  admired  her  mother  and  paid  Louie  a  fantastic  and  stormy 
homage  through  her  child.  She  also  condescended  to  take  an 
interest  in  Lucy's  wardrobe.  The  mingled  temper  and  avidity 
with  which  Lucy  received  her  advances  may  be  imagined.  It 
made  her  mad  to  have  it  constantly  implied  that  her  gowns  and 
bonnets  would  not  be  worn  by  a  maid-of-all-work  in  Paris.  At 
the  same  time,  when  Louie's  fingers  had  been  busy  with  them  it 
was  as  plain  to  her  as  to  anyone  else  that  they  became  her  twice 
as  well  as  they  had  before.  So  she  submitted  to  be  pinned  and 
pulled  about  and  tried  on,  keeping  as  much  as  possible  on  her 
dignity  all  the  time,  and  reddening  with  fresh  wrath  each  time 


506  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

that  Louie  made  it  plain  to  her  that  she  thought  her  sister-in-law 
a  provincial  little  fool,  and  was  only  troubling  herself  about  her 
to  pass  the  time. 

Dora,  of  course,  came  up  to  see  Louie,  and  Louie  was  much 
more  communicative  to  her  than  to  either  Lucy  or  David.  She 
told  stories  of  her  husband  which  made  Dora's  hair  stand  on  end  ; 
but  she  boasted  in  great  detail  of  her  friendships  with  certain 
Legitimist  ladies  of  the  bluest  blood,  with  one  of  whom  she  had 
just  held  a  quete  for  some  Catholic  object  on  the  stairs  of  the 
Salon.  '  I  was  in  blue  and  pink  with  a  little  silver,'  she  said, 
looking  quickly  behind  her  to  see  that  Lucy  was  not  listening. 
*  And  Cecile  was  a  fairy,  with  spangled  wings — the  sweetest  thing 
you  ever  saw.  "We  were  both  in  the  illustrated  papers  the  week 

after,  but  as  nobody  took  any  notice  of  Madame  de  C she  has 

behaved  like  a  washerwoman  to  me  ever  since.  As  if  I  could 
help  her  complexion  or  her  age  ! ' 

But  above  all  did  she  boast  herself  against  Dora  in  Church 
matters.  She  would  go  to  St.  Damian's  on  Sunday,  triumph- 
antly announcing  that  she  should  have  to  confess  it  as  a  sin  when 
she  got  home,  and  afterwards,  when  Dora,  as  her  custom  was, 
came  out  to  early  dinner  with  the  Grieves,  Louie  could  not  contain 
herself  on  the  subject  of  the  dresses,  the  processions,  the  decora- 
tions, the  flowers,  and  ceremonial  trappings  in  general,  with 
which  she  might,  if  she  liked,  regale  herself  either  at  Ste.  Eulalie 
or  the  Madeleine,  in  comparison  with  the  wretched  show  offered 
by  St.  Damian's.  Dora,  after  an  early  service  and  much  Sunday- 
school,  sat  looking  pale  and  weary  under  the  scornful  information 
poured  out  upon  her.  She  was  outraged  by  Louie's  tone ;  yet 
she  was  stung  by  her  contempt.  Once  her  gentleness  was  roused 
to  speech,  and  she  endeavoured  to  give  some  of  the  reasons  for 
rejecting  the  usurped  authority  of  the  'Bishop  of  Borne, '  in 
which  she  had  been  drilled  at  different  times.  But  she  floundered 
and  came  to  grief.  Her  adversary  laughed  at  her,  and  in  the 
intervals  of  rating  Cecile  for  having  inked  her  dress,  flaunted 
some  shrill  controversy  which  left  them  all  staring.  Louie 
vindicating  the  claims  of  the  Holy  See  with  much  unction  and 
an  appropriate  diction  !  It  seemed  to  David,  as  he  listened,  that 
the  irony  of  life  could  hardly  be  carried  further. 

On  the  following  day,  David,  not  without  a  certain  conscious- 
ness, said  to  John  Dalby,  his  faithful  helper  through  many  years, 
and  of  late  his  partner  : 

'  My  sister  is  up  at  our  place,  John,  with  her  little  girl.  Lucy 
would  be  very  glad  if  you  would  go  in  this  evening  to  see  them.' 

John,  who  was  already  aware  of  the  advent  of  Madame 
Montjoie,  accepted  the  invitation  and  went.  Louie  received  him 
with  a  manner  half  mocking — half  patronising — and  made  no 
effort  whatever  to  be  agreeable  to  him.  She  was  preoccupied  ; 
and  the  stout,  shy  man  in  his  new  suit  only  bored  her.  As  for 
him,  he  sat  and  watched  her  ;  his  small,  amazed  eyes  took  in  her 
ways  with  C4cile,  alternately  boastful  and  tyrannical ;  her  airs 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  507 

towards  Lucy  ;  her  complete  indifference  to  her  brother's  life  and 
interests.  When  he  got  up  to  go,  he  took  leave  of  her  with  all 
the  old  timid  gaucherie.  But  if,  when  he  entered  the  room, 
there  had  been  anything  left  in  his  mind  of  the  old  dream,  he 
was  a  wholly  free  man  when  he  recrossed  the  threshold.  He 
walked  home  thinking  much  of  a  small  solicitor's  daughter,  who 
worshipped  at  the  Congregational  chapel  he  himself  attended. 
He  had  been  at  David  Grieve's  side  all  these  years  ;  he  loved  him 
probably  more  than  he  would  now  love  any  woman  ;  he  devoted 
himself  with  ardour  to  the  printing  and  selling  of  the  various 
heretical  works  and  newspapers  published  by  Grieve  &  Co. ;  and 
yet  for  some  long  time  past  he  had  been — and  was  likely  to  remain 
— a  man  of  strong  religious  convictions,  of  a  common  Evangelical 
type. 

The  second  week  of  Louie's  stay  was  a  much  greater  trial  than 
the  first  to  all  concerned.  She  grew  tired  of  dressing  and  patro- 
nising Lucy  ;  her  sharp  eyes  and  tongue  found  out  all  her  sister- 
in-law's  weak  points  ;  the  two  children  were  a  fruitful  source  of 
jarring  and  jealousy  between  the  mothers  ;  and  by. the  end  of  the 
week  their  relation  was  so  much  strained,  and  David  had  so  much 
difficulty  in  keeping  the  peace,  that  he  could  only  pine  for  the 
Monday  morning  which  was  to  see  Louie's  departure.  Mean- 
while nothing  occurred  to  give  him  back  his  momentary  hold 
upon  her.  She  took  great  care  not  to  be  alone  with  him.  It 
was  as  though  she  felt  the  presence  of  a  new  force  in  him,  and 
would  give  it  no  chance  of  affecting  her  in  mysterious  and  incal- 
culable ways. 

On  the  Saturday  before  her  last  Sunday,  Reuben  Grieve 
arrived  in  Manchester — with  his  wife.  His  nephew's  letter  and 
invitation  had  thrown  the  old  man  into  a  great  flutter.  Ulti- 
mately his  curiosity  as  to  David's  home  and  child — David 
himself  he  had  seen  several  times  since  the  marriage — and  the 
desire,  which  the  more  prosperous  state  of  his  own  circumstances 
allowed  him  to  feel,  to  see  what  Louie  might  be  like  after  all 
these  years— decided  him  to  go.  And  when  he  told  Hannah  of 
his  intended  journey,  he  found,  to  his  amazement,  that  she  was 
minded  to  go  too.  '  If  yo'll  tell  me  when  yo  gan  me  a  jaunt  last, 
I'll  be  obliged  to  yo  ! '  she  said  sourly,  and  he  at  once  felt  himself 
a  selfish  brute  that  he  should  have  thought  of  taking  the  little 
pleasure  without  her. 

When  they  were  seated  in  the  railway-carriage,  he  broke  out 
in  a  sudden  excitement  : 

'  Wai,  I  never  thowt,  Hannah,  to  see  yo  do  thissens  naw  moor  ! ' 

'  Aye,  yo  wor  allus  yan  to  mak  t'  warst  o'  things,'  she  said  to 
him,  as  she  slowly  settled  herself  in  her  corner. 

Nevertheless,  Reuben's  feeling  was  amply  justified.  It  had 
been  a  resurrection.  The  clever  young  doctor,  brimful  of  new 
methods,  who  had  brought  her  round,  had  arrived  just  in  time 
to  stop  the  process  of  physical  deterioration  before  it  had  gone 
too  far ;  and  the  recovery  of  power  both  on  the  paralysed  side 


508  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

and  in  general  health  had  been  marvellous.  She  walked  with  a 
stick,  and  was  an  old  and  blanched  woman  before  her  time.  But 
her  indomitable  spirit  was  once  more  provided  with  its  necessary 
means  of  expression.  She  was  at  least  as  rude  as  ever,  and  it 
was  as  clear  as  anything  can  be  in  the  case  of  a  woman  who  has 
never  learnt  to  smile,  that  her  visit  to  Manchester — the  first  for 
ten  years — was  an  excitement  and  satisfaction  to  her. 

David  met  them  at  the  station ;  but  Reuben  persisted  in 
going  to  an  old-fashioned  eating-house  in  the  centre  of  the  city, 
where  he  had  been  accustomed  to  stay  on  the  occasion  of  his  rare 
visits  to  Manchester,  in  spite  of  his  nephew's  repeated  offers  of 
hospitality. 

'Noa,  Davy,  noa,'  he  said,  'yo're  a  gen'leman  now,  and  yo 
conno'  be  moidered  wi'  oos.  We'st  coom  and  see  yo — thank  yo 
kindly, — bit  we'st  do  for  oursels  i'  th'  sleepin'  way.' 

To  which  Hannah  gave  a  grim  and  energetic  assent. 

When  Louie  had  been  told  of  their  expected  arrival  she 
opened  her  black  eyes  to  their  very  widest  extent. 

'  Well,  you'd  better  keep  Aunt  Hannah  and  me  out  of  each 
other's  way,'  she  remarked  briefly.  'I  shall  let  her  have  it, 
you'll  see.  I'm  bound  to.'  A  remark  that  David  did  his  best  to 
forget,  seeing  that  the  encounter  was  now  past  averting. 

When  on  Sunday  afternoon  the  door  of  the  Grieves's  sitting- 
room  opened  to  admit  Hannah  and  Reuben  Grieve,  Louie  was 
lying  half  asleep  in  an  armchair  by  the  fire,  Cecile  and  Sandy 
were  playing  with  bricks  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and  Dora 
and  Lucy  were  chatting  on  the  sofa. 

Lucy,  who  had  seen  Reuben  before,  but  had  never  set  eyes 
on  Hannah,  sprang  up  ill  at  ease  and  awkward,  but  genuinely 
anxious  to  behave  nicely  to  her  husband's  relations. 

'  Won't  you  take  a  chair  ?  I'll  go  and  call  David.  He's  in 
the  next  room.  This  is  Miss  Lomax.  Louie  ! ' 

Startled  by  the  somewhat  sharp  call,  Louie  sat  up  and  rubbed 
her  eyes. 

Hannah,  resting  on  her  stick,  was  standing  in  the  middle  of 
the  floor.  At  sight  of  the  familiar  tyrannous  face,  grown  parch- 
ment-white in  place  of  its  old  grey  hue — of  the  tall  gaunt  figure 
robed  in  the  Sunday  garb  of  rusty  black  which  Louie  perfectly 
remembered,  and  surmounted  by  the  old  head-gear — the  stiff 
frizzled  curls  held  in  place  by  two  small  combs  on  the  temples, 
the  black  bandeau  across  the  front  of  the  head,  and  the  towering 
bonnet — Louie  suddenly  flushed  and  rose. 

'  How  do  you  do  ? '  she  said  in  a  cool  off-hand  way,  holding 
out  her  hand,  which  Hannah's  black  cotton  glove  barely  touched. 
'  Well,  Uncle  Reuben,  do  you  think  I'm  grown  ?  I  have  had 
about  time  to,  anyway,  since  you  saw  me.  That's  my  little  girl.' 

With  a  patronising  smile  she  pushed  forward  Cecile.  The 
short-sighted  tremulous  Reuben,  staring  uncomforrably  about 
him  at  the  town  splendours  in  which  '  Davy  '  lived,  had  to  have 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  509 

the  child's  hand  put  into  his  by  Dora  before  he  could  pull  him- 
self together  enough  to  respond. 

'  I'm  glad  to  see  tha,  my  little  dear,'  he  said,  awkwardly 
dropping  his  hat  and  umbrella,  as  he  stooped  to  salute  her.  '  I'm 
sure  yo're  varra  kind,  miss ' — this  was  said  apologetically  to  Dora, 
who  had  picked  up  his  belongings  and  put  them  on  a  chair. 
'Wai,  Louie,  she  doan't  feature  her  mither  mich,  as  I  can  see.' 

He  looked  hurriedly  at  his  wife  for  confirmation.  Hannah, 
who  had  seated  herself  on  the  highest  and  plainest  chair  she 
could  find,  stared  the  child  up  and  down,  and  then  slowly  re- 
moved her  eyes,  saying  nothing.  Instantly  her  manner  woke  the 
old  rage  in  Louie,  who  was  observing  her  excitedly. 

'  Come  here  to  me,  Cecile.  I'd  be  sorry,  anyway,  if  you  were 
like  what  your  mother  was  at  your  age.  You'd  be  a  poor,  ill- 
treated,  half-starved  little  wretch  if  you  were  ! ' 

Hannah  started,  but  not  unpleasantly.  Her  grim  mouth 
curved  with  a  sort  of  satisfaction.  It  was  many  years  since 
she  had  enjoyed  those  opportunities  for  battle  which  Louie's 
tempers  had  once  so  freely  afforded  her. 

'She's  nobbut  a  midge,'  she  remarked  audibly  to  Dora,  who 
had  just  tried  to  propitiate  her  by  a  footstool.  '  The  chilt  looks 
as  thoo  she'd  been  fed  on  spiders  or  frogs,  or  summat  o'  that 
soart. ' 

At  this  moment  David  came  in,  just  in  time  to  prevent  another 
explosion  from  Louie.  He  was  genuinely  glad  to  see  his  guests  ; 
his  feeling  of  kinship  was  much  stronger  now  than  it  ever  had 
been  in  his  youth  ;  and  in  these  years  of  independent,  and  on 
the  whole  happy,  living  he  had  had  time  to  forget  even  Hannah's 
enormities. 

'  Well,  have  you  got  a  comfortable  inn  ? '  he  asked  Eeuben 
presently,  when  some  preliminaries  were  over. 

'I  thank  yo  kindly,  Davy,'  said  Reuben  cautiously,  'we're 
meeterly  weel  sarved  ;  bit  yo  conno  look  for  mich  fro  teawu 
folk.' 

'  What  are  yo  allus  so  mealy-mouthed  for  ? '  said  his  wife  in- 
dignantly. '  Why  conno  yo  say  reet  out  'at  it's  a  pleeace  not  fit 
for  ony  decent  dog  to  put  his  head  in,  an'  an  ill-mannert  daggle- 
tail  of  a  woman  to  keep  it,  as  I'd  like  to  sweep  out  wi  th'  bits  of 
a  morning,  an'  leave  her  on  th'  muck-heap  wheer  she  belongs  ? ' 

David  laughed.  To  an  ear  long  accustomed  to  the  monotony 
of  town  civilities  there  was  a  not  unwelcome  savour  of  the  moors 
even  in  these  brutalities  of  Hannah's. 

'  Sandy,  where  are  you  ? '  he  said,  looking  round.  '  Have  you 
had  a  look  at  him,  Aunt  Hannah  ?' 

Sandy,  who  was  sitting  in  the  midst  of  his  bricks  sucking  his 
thumb  patiently  till  Cecile  should  be  given  back  to  him  by  her 
mother,  and  these  invaders  should  be  somehow  dispersed,  looked 
up  and  gave  his  father  a  sleepy  and  significant  nod,  as  much  as 
to  say,  'Leave  me  alone,  and  turn  these  people  out.' 

But  David  lifted  him  up,  and  carried  him  off  for  exhibition. 


510  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Hannah  looked  at  him,  as  he  lay  lazily  back  on  his  father's 
arm,  his  fair  curls  straying  over  David's  coat,  his  cheek  flushed 
by  the  heat.  'Aye,  he's  a  gradely  little  chap,' she  said,  more 
graciously  it  seemed  to  David  than  he  ever  remembered  to  have 
heard  Hannah  Grieve  speak  before.  His  paternal  vanity  was  in- 
stantly delighted. 

'  Sit  up,  Sandy,  and  tell  your  great-uncle  and  aunt  about  the 
fine  games  you've  been  having  with  your  cousin.' 

But  Sandy  was  lost  in  quite  other  reflections.  He  looked  out 
upon  Hannah  and  Reuben  with  grave  filmy  eyes,  as  though  from 
a  vast  distance,  and  said  absently  : 

'  Daddy  ! ' 

'  Yes,  Sandy,  speak  up.' 

'  Daddy,  when  everybody  in  the  world  was  babies,  who  put 
'em  to  bed  ? ' 

The  child  spoke  as  usual  with  a  slow  flute-like  articulation,  so 
that  every  word  could  be  heard.  Reuben  and  Hannah  turned 
and  looked  at  each  other. 

'  Lord  alive  1 '  cried  Hannah  '  whativer  put  sich  notions  into 
th'  chilt'syed?' 

David,  with  a  happy  twinkle  in  his  eye,  held  up  a  hand  for 
silence. 

'  I  don't  know,  Sandy  ;  give  it  up.' 

Sandy  considered  a  second  or  two,  then  said,  with  the  sigh  of 
one  who  relinquishes  speculation  in  favor  of  the  conventional 
solution : 

'  I  s'pose  God  did. ' 

His  tone  was  dejected,  as  though  he  would  gladly  have  come 
to  another  conclusion  if  he  could. 

'Reuben,'  said  Hannah  with  severity,  'hand  me  that  sugar- 
stick.  ' 

Reuben  groped  in  his  pockets  for  the  barley-sugar,  which,  in 
spite  of  Hannah's  scoffs,  he  had  bought  in  Market  Street  the 
evening  before,  '  for  t'  childer. '  He  watched  his  wife  in  gaping 
astonishment  as  he  saw  her  approaching  Sandy,  with  blandish- 
ments which,  rough  and  clumsy  as  they  were,  had  nevertheless 
the  effect  of  beguiling  that  young  man  on  to  the  lap  where 
barley-sugar  was  to  be  had.  Hannah  fed  him  triumphantly, 
making  loud  remarks  on  his  beauty  and  cleverness. 

Meanwhile  Louie  stood  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire,  holding 
C&nle  close  against  her,  with  a  tight  defiant  grip — her  lip 
twitching  contemptuously.  David,  always  sensitively  alive  to 
her  presence  and  her  moods,  insisted  in  the  midst  of  Sandy's 
feast  that  Cecile  should  have  her  share.  Sandy  held  out  the 
barley-sugar,  following  it  with  wistful  eyes.  Louie  beat  down 
Cecile's  grasping  hand.  'You  shan't  spoil  your  tea — you'll  be 
sick  with  that  stuff ! '  she  said  imperiously.  Hannah  turned, 
and  brought  a  slow  venomous  scrutiny  to  bear  upon  her  niece — 
on  the  slim  tall  figure  in  the  elegant  Parisian  dress,  the  daintily 
curled  and  frizzled  head,  the  wild  angry  eyes.  Then  she  with- 


CHAP,  vi  »  MATURITY  511 

drew  her  glance,  contented.  Louie's  evident  jealousy  appeased 
her.  She  had  come  to  Manchester  with  one  fixed  determination. 
— not  to  be  '  talked  foine  to  by  that  hizzy.' 

At  this  juncture  tea  made  its  appearance,  Lucy  having  some 
time  ago  given  up  the  sit-down  tea  in  the  dining-room,  which 
was  the  natural  custom  of  her  class,  as  not  genteel.  She  seated 
herself  nervously  to  pour  it  out.  Hannah  had  at  the  very  be- 
ginning put  her  down  '  as  a  middlin'  soart  o'  person,'  and  vouch- 
safed her  very  little  notice. 

'  Auntie  Dora !  auntie  Dora  1 '  cried  Sandy,  escaping  from 
Hannah's  knee,  '  I'm  coming  to  sit  by  zoo.' 

And  as  soon  as  he  had  got  comfortably  into  her  pocket,  he 
pulled  her  head  down  and  whispered  to  her,  his  thoughts  running 
as  before  in  the  theological  groove,  '  Auntie  Dora,  God  made  me 
— and  God  made  Ce"cile  tint  (}nd  make  that  one?' 

And  he  nodded  across  a<  Hannah,  huddling  himself  together 
meanwhile  in  a  paroxysm  of  glee  and  mischief.  He  was  excited 
by  the  flatteries  he  had  been  receiving,  and  Dora,  thankful  to  see 
that  Hannah  had  heard  nothing,  could  only  quiet  him  by  copious 
supplies  of  bread  and  butter. 

David  wooed  C6cile  to  sit  on  a  stool  beside  him,  and  things 
went  smoothly  for  a  time,  though  Hannah  made  it  clearly  evi- 
dent that  this  was  not  the  kind  of  tea  she  had  expected,  and 
that  she  'didn't  howd  wi'  new-fangled  ways  o'  takkin'  your 
vittles.'  Keuben  did  his  best  to  cover  and  neutralise  her  remarks 
by  gossip  to  David  about  the  farm  and  the  valley.  '  Eh — it's 
been  nobbut  raggy  weather  up  o'  the  moors  this  winter,  Davy, 
an'  a  great  lot  o'  sheep  lost.  Nobbut  twothrey  o'  mine,  I  thank 
th'  Lord.'  But  in  the  midst  of  a  most  unflattering  account  of 
the  later  morals  and  development  of  the  Wigson  family,  Reuben 
stopped  dead  short,  with  a  stare  at  the  door. 

'  Wai,  aaniver ! — theer's  Mr.  Ancrumhissel, — Idouphowdyo! ' 

And  the  old  man  rose  with  effusion,  his  queer  eyes  and  face 
beaming  and  blinking  with  a  light  of  affectionate  memory,  for 
Ancrum  stood  in  the  doorway,  smiling  a  mute  inquiry  at  Lucy 
as  to  whether  he  might  come  in.  David  sprang  up  to  bring 
him  into  the  circle.  Hannah  held  out  an  ungracious  hand. 
Never,  all  these  years,  had  she  forgiven  the  ex-minister  those 
representations  he  had  once  made  on  the  subject  of  David's 
'prenticing. 

Then  the  new-comer  sat  down  by  Keuben  cheerily,  parrying 
the  farmer's  concern  about  his  altered  looks,  and  watching  Louie, 
who  had  thrown  him  a  careless  word  in  answer  to  his  greeting. 
Dora,  who  had  come  to  know  him  well,  and  to  feel  much  of  the 
affectionate  reverence  for  him  that  David  did,  in  spite  of  some 
bewilderment  as  to  his  religious  position,  went  round  presently 
to  talk  to  him,  and  Sandy  as  it  happened  was  left  on  his  stool 
for  a  minute  or  two  forgotten.  He  asked  his  mother  plaintively 
for  cake,  and  she  did  not  hear  him.  Meanwhile  Cecile  had  cake, 
and  he  followed  her  eating  of  it  with  resentful  eyes. 


512  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  Come  here,  Cecile,'  said  David,  'and  hold  the  cake  while  I 
cut  it ;  there's  a  useful  child.' 

He  handed  a  piece  to  Reuben,  and  then  put  the  next  into 
Cecile's  hand. 

4  Ready  for  some  more,  little  woman  ? ' 

Cecile  in  a  furtive  squirrel-like  way  seized  the  piece  and  was 
retiring  with  it,  when  Sandy,  beside  himself,  jumped  from  his 
stool,  rushed  at  his  cousin  and  beat  her  wildly  with  his  small 
fists. 

'  Yo're  a  geedy  thing — a  geedy  'gustin'  thing ! '  he  cried, 
sobbing  partly  because  he  wanted  the  cake,  still  more  because, 
after  his  exaltation  on  Hannah's  knee,  he  had  been  so  unaccount- 
ably neglected.  To  see  Cecile  battening  on  a  second  piece  while 
he  was  denied  a  first  was  more  than  could  be  borne. 

'  You  little  viper,  you ! '  exclaimed  Louie,  and  springing  up, 
she  swept  across  to  Sandy,  and  boxed  his  ears  smartly,  just  as 
she  was  accustomed  to  box  Cecile's,  whenever  the  fancy  took  her. 

The  child  raised  a  piercing  cry,  and  David  caught  him  up. 

'  Give  him  to  me,  David,  give  him  to  me,'  cried  Lucy,  who 
had  almost  upset  the  tea-table  in  her  rush  to  her  child.  '  I'll 
see  whether  that  sister  of  yours  shall  beat  and  abuse  my  boy  in 
my  own  house !  Oh,  she  may  beat  her  own  child  as  much  as  she 
pleases,  she  does  it  all  day  long  1  If  she  were  a  poor  person  she 
would  be  had  up.' 

Her  face  glowed  with  passion.  The  exasperation  of  many 
days  spoke  in  her  outburst.  David,  himself  trembling  with  anger, 
in  vain  tried  to  quiet  her  and  Sandy. 

'  Ay,  I  reckon  she  maks  it  hot  wark  for  them  'at  ha  to  live  wi 
her,'  said  Hannah  audibly,  looking  round  on  the  scene  with  a 
certain  enjoyment  which  contrasted  with  the  panic  and  distress 
of  the  rest. 

Louie,  who  was  holding  C6cile — also  in  tears — in  her  arms, 
swept  her  fierce,  contemptuous  gaze  from  Lucy  to  her  ancient 
enemy. 

4  You  must  be  putting  in  your  word,  must  you  ? — you  old 
toad,  you — you  that  robbed  us  of  our  money  till  your  own  hus- 
band was  ashamed  of  you ! ' 

And,  totally  regardless  of  the  presence  of  Dora  and  Ancrum, 
and  of  the  efforts  made  to  silence  her  by  Dora  or  by  the  flushed 
and  unhappy  Reuben,  she  descended  on  her  foe.  She  flung 
charge  after  charge  in  Hannah's  face,  showing  the  minutest  and 
most  vindictive  memory  for  all  the  sordid  miseries  of  her  child- 
hood ;  and  then  when  her  passion  had  spent  itself  on  her  aunt, 
she  returned  to  Lucy,  exulting  in  the  sobs  and  the  excitement 
she  had  produced.  In  vain  did  David  try  either  to  silence 
her  or  to  take  Lucy  away.  Nothing  but  violence  could  have 
stopped  the  sister's  tongue  ;  his  wife,  under  a  sort  of  fascination 
of  terror  and  rage,  would  not  move.  Flinging  all  thoughts  of 
her  dependence  on  David — of  the  money  she  had  come  to  ask — 
of  her  leave-taking  on  the  morrow — to  the  winds,  Louie  revenged 


CHAP,  vi  MATUBITT  518 

herself  amply  for  her  week's  unnatural  self-control,  and  gave 
full  rein  to  a  mad  propensity  which  had  been  gradually  roused 
and  spurred  to  ungovernable  force  by  the  trivial  incidents  of  the 
afternoon.  She  made  mock  of  Lucy's  personal  vanity ;  she 
sneered  at  her  attempts  to  ape  her  betters,  shrilly  declaring  that 
no  one  would  ever  take  her  for  anything  else  than  what  she  was, 
the  daughter  of  a  vulgar  cheese-paring  old  hypocrite  ;  and, 
finally,  she  attacked  Sandy  as  a  nasty,  greedy,  abominable  little 
monkey,  not  fit  to  associate  with  her  child,  and  badly  in  want 
of  the  stick. 

Then  slowly  she  retreated  to  the  door  out  of  breath,  the  wild 
lightnings  of  her  eyes  flashing  on  them  still.  David  was  holding 
the  hysterical  Lucy,  while  Dora  was  trying  to  quiet  Sandy. 
Otherwise  a  profound  silence  had  fallen  on  them  all,  a  silence 
which  seemed  but  to  kindle  Louie's  fury  the  more. 

'  Ah,  you  think  you've  got  him  in  your  power,  him  and  his 
money,  you  little  white-livered  cat ! '  she  cried,  standing  in  the 
doorway,  and  fixing  Lucy  with  a  look  beneath  which  her  sister- 
in-law  quailed,  and  hid  her  face  on  David's  arm.  '  You  think 
you'll  stop  him  giving  it  to  them  that  have  a  right  to  look  to 
him  ?  Perhaps  you'd  better  look  out ;  perhaps  there  are  people 
who  know  more  about  him  than  you.  Do  you  think  he  would 
ever  have  looked  at  you,  you  little  powsement,  if  he  hadn't  been 
taken  on  the  rebound  ? ' 

She  gave  a  mad  laugh  as  she  flung  out  the  old  Derbyshire 
word  of  abuse,  and  stood  defying  them,  David  and  all.  David 
strode  forward  and  shut  the  door  upon  her.  Then  he  went  ten- 
derly up  to  his  wife,  and  took  her  and  Sandy  into  the  library. 

The  sound  of  Cecile's  wails  could  be  heard  in  the  distance. 
The  frightened  Reuben  turned  and  looked  at  his  wife.  She  had 
grown  paler  even  than  before,  but  her  eyes  were  all  alive. 

'A  racklesome,  natterin'  creetur  as  ivir  I  seed,'  she  said 
calmly;  'I  allus  telt  tha,  Reuben  Grieve,  what  hoo'd  coom  to. 
It's  bred  in  her — that's  yan  thing  to  be  hodden  i'  mind.  But  I'll 
shift  her  in  double  quick-sticks  if  she  ever  cooms  meddlin'  i'  my 
house,  Reuben  Grieve — soa  yo  know.' 

'  She  oughtn't  to  stay  here,'  said  Ancrum  in  a  quick  undertone 
to  Dora  ;  '  she  might  do  that  mother  and  child  a  mischief.' 

Dora  sat  absorbed  in  her  pity  for  David,  in  her  passionate 
sympathy  for  this  home  that  was  as  her  own, 

'  She  is  going  to-morrow,  thank  God  ! '  she  said  with  a  long 
breath  ;  '  oh,  what  an  awful  woman  ! ' 

Ancrum  looked  at  her  with  a  little  sad  smile. 

'  Whom  are  you  sorry  for  ? '  he  asked.  '  Those  two  in  there  ? ' 
and  he  nodded  towards  the  library.  '  Think  again,  Miss  Dora. 
There  is  one  face  that  will  haunt  me  whenever  I  think  of  this — 
the  face  of  that  French  child.' 

All  the  afternoon  visitors  dispersed.  The  hours  passed.  Lucy, 
worn  out,  had  gone  to  bed  with  a  crying  which  seemed  to  have 


514  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

in  it  some  new  and  heavy  element  she  would  not  speak  of,  even 
to  David.  The  evening  meal  came,  and  there  was  no  sign  or 
sound  from  that  room  upstairs  where  Louie  had  locked  herself 
in. 

David  stood  by  the  fire  in  the  dining-room,  his  lips  sternly  set. 
He  had  despatched  a  servant  to  Louie's  door  with  an  offer  to 
send  up  food  for  her  and  C6cile.  But  the  girl  had  got  no  answer. 
Was  he  bound  to  go — bound  to  bring  about  the  possible  renewal 
of  a  degrading  scene  ? 

At  this  moment  Lizzie,  the  little  nurse,  tapped  at  the  door. 

*  If  you  please,  sir — ' 

*  Yes.     Anything  wrong  with  Master  Sandy  ?  ' 

David  went  to  the  door  in  a  tremor.  '  He  won't  go  to  sleep, 
sir.  He  wants  you,  and  I'm  afraid  he'll  disturb  mistress  again.' 

David  ran  upstairs. 

'  Sandy,  what  do  you  want  ? ' 

Sandy  was  crying  violently,  far  down  under  the  bedclothes. 
When  David  drew  him  out,  he  was  found  to  be  grasping  a  piece 
of  crumbling  cake,  sticky  with  tears. 

*  It's  Chile's  cake,'  he  sobbed  into  his  father's  ear.     '  I  want 
to  give  it  her.' 

And  in  fact,  after  his  onslaught  upon  her,  Cecile  had  dropped 
the  offending  cake,  which  he  had  instantly  picked  up  the  moment 
before  Louie  struck  him.  He  had  held  it  tight  gripped  ever 
since,  and  repentance  was  busy  in  his  sirall  heart. 

David  thought  a  moment. 

*  Gome  with  me,  Sandy,'  he  said  at  last,  and,  wrapping  up  the 
child  in  an  old  shawl  that  hung  near,  he  carried  him  off  to  Louie's 
door.     '  Louie  ! '  he  called,  after  his  knock,  in  a  low  voice,  for  he 
was  uncomfortably  aware  that  his  household  was  on  the  watch 
for  developments. 

For  a  while  there  was  no  answer.  Sandy,  absorbed  in  the 
interest  of  the  situation,  clung  close  to  his  father  and  stopped 
crying. 

At  last  Louie  suddenly  flung  the  door  wide  open. 

'  What  do  you  want  ? '  she  said  defiantly,  with  the  gesture 
and  bearing  of  a  tragic  actress.  She  was,  however,  deadly  white, 
and  David,  looking  past  her,  saw  that  Cecile  was  lying  wide 
awake  in  her  little  bed. 

'Sandy  wants  to  give  Cecile  her  cake,'  he  said  quietly,  'and 
to  tell  her  that  he  is  sorry  for  striking  her.' 

He  carried  his  boy  up  to  Cecile.  A  smile  flashed  over  the 
child's  worn  face.  She  held  out  her  little  arms.  David,  infinitely 
touched,  laid  down  Sandy,  and  the  children  crooned  together  on 
the  same  pillow,  he  trying  to  stuff  the  cake  into  Cecile's  mouth, 
she  gently  refusing. 

'  She's  ill,'  said  Louie  abruptly,  '  she's  feverish — I  want  a 
doctor.' 

'We  can  get  one  directly,'  he  said.  'Will  you  come  down 
and  have  some  food  ?  Lucy  has  gone  to  bed.  If  Lizzie  comes 


CHAP,  vii  MATURITY  515 

and  sits  by  the  children,  perhaps  they  will  go  to  sleep.  I  can 
carry  Sandy  back  later.' 

Louie  paused  irresolutely.  Then  she  went  up  to  the  bed, 
knelt  down  by  it,  and  took  C6cile  in  her  arms. 

'You  can  take  him  away,'  she  said,  pointing  to  Sandy.  'I 
will  put  her  to  sleep.  Don't  you  send  me  anything  to  eat.  I  want 
a  doctor.  And  if  you  won't  order  a  fly  for  me  at  twenty  minutes 
to  nine  to-morrow,  I  will  go  out  myself,  that's  all.' 

'  Louie  ! '  he  cried,  holding  out  his  hand  to  her  in  despair, 
'  why  will  you  treat  us  in  this  way — what  have  we  done  to  you  ? ' 

'  Never  you  mind,'  she  said  sullenly,  gathering  the  child  to 
her  and  confronting  him  with  steady  eyes.  There  was  a  certain 
magnificence  in  their  wide  unconscious  despair — in  this  one  fierce 
passion. 

She  and  Lucy  did  not  meet  again.  In  the  morning  David 
paid  her  her  hundred  pounds,  and  took  her  and  Cecile  to  the 
station,  a  doctor  having  seen  the  child  the  night  before,  and 
prescribed  medicine,  which  had  given  her  a  quiet  night.  Louie 
barely  thanked  him  for  the  money.  She  was  almost  silent  and 
still  very  pale. 

Just  before  they  parted,  the  thought  of  the  tyranny  of  such 
a  nature,  of  the  life  to  which  she  was  going  back,  wrung  the 
brother's  heart.  The  outrage  of  the  day  before  dropped  from  his 
mind  as  of  no  account,  effaced  by  sterner  realities. 

'  Write  to  me,  Louie  !'  he  said  to  her  just  as  the  train  was 
moving  off  ;  '  I  could  always  come  if  there  was  trouble — or  Dora.' 

She  did  not  answer,  and  her  hand  dropped  from  his.  But 
he  remembered  afterwards  that  her  eyes  were  fixed  upon  him, 
as  long  as  the  train  was  in  sight,  and  the  picture  of  her  dark 
possessed  look  will  be  with  him  to  the  end. 

CHAPTER  VII 

IT  was  a  warm  April  Sunday.  Lucy  and  Dora  were  pacing  up  and 
down  in  the  garden,  and  Lucy  was  talking  in  a  quick,  low  voice. 

'  Oh  !  there  was  something,  Dora.  You  know  as  well  as  I  do 
there  was  something.  That  awful  woman  didn't  Bay  that  for 
nothing.  I  suppose  he'd  tell  me  if  I  asked  him. ' 

'  Then  why  don't  you  ask  him  ? '  said  Dora,  with  a  little  frown. 

Lucy  gathered  a  sprig  of  budding  lilac,  and  restlessly  stripped 
off  its  young  green. 

'  It  isn't  very  pleasant,'  she  said  at  last,  slowly.  'I  dare  say 
it's  silly  to  expect  your  husband  never  to  have  looked  at  anybody 
else — ' 

She  paused  again,  unable  to  explain  herself.  Dora  glanced  at 
her,  and  was  somewhat  struck  by  her  thin  and  worn  appearance. 
She  had  often,  moreover,  seemed  to  her  cousin  to  be  fretting 
during  these  last  weeks.  Not  that  there  was  much  difference  in  her 
wavs  with  David  and  Sandy.  But  her  small  vanities,  prejudices, 


516  THE   HISTORY   OF   DAVID   GRIEVE          BOOK  nr 

and  passions  were  certainly  less  apparent  of  late  ;  she  ordered 
her  two  servants  about  less  ;  she  was  less  interested  in  her  clothes, 
less  eager  for  social  amusement.  It  was  as  though  something 
clouding  and  dulling  bad  passed  over  a  personality  which  was 
naturally  restless  and  vivacious. 

Yet  it  was  only  to-day,  in  the  course  of  some  conversation 
about  Louie,  of  whom  nothing  had  been  heard  since  her  departure, 
that  Lucy  had  for  the  first  time  broken  silence  on  the  subject  of 
those  insolent  words  of  her  sister-in-law,  which  Ancrum  and  Dora 
had  listened  to  with  painful  shock,  while  to  Reuben  and  Hannah, 
pre-occupied  with  their  own  long-matured  ideas  of  Louie,  they 
had  been  the  mere  froth  of  a  venomous  tongue. 

'  Why  didn't  you  ask  him  about  it  at  first — just  after  ? '  Dora 
resumed. 

'  I  didn't  want  to,'  said  Lucy,  after  a  minute,  and  then  would 
say  no  more.  But  she  walked  along,  thinking,  unhappily,  of  the 
moment  when  David  had  taken  her  into  the  library  to  be  out  of 
the  sound  of  Louie's  rage  ;  of  her  angry  desire  to  ask  him  ques- 
tions, checked  by  a  childish  fear  she  could  not  analyse,  as  to  what 
the  answers  might  be  ;  of  his  troubled,  stormy  face ;  and  of  the 
tender  ways  by  which  he  tried  to  calm  and  comfort  her.  It  had 
seemed  to  her  that  once  or  twice  he  had  been  on  the  point  of 
saying  something  grave  and  unusual,  but  in  the  end  he  had 
refrained.  Louie  had  gone  away  ;  their  everyday  life  had  begun 
again  ;  he  had  been  very  full,  in  the  intervals  of  his  hai'd  daily 
business,  of  the  rebuilding  of  the  James  Street  court,  and  of  the 
apprentices'  school ;  and,  led  by  a  variety  of  impulses — by  a  sense 
of  jeopardised  possession  and  a  conscience  speaking  with  new 
emphasis  and  authority — she  had  taken  care  that  he  should  talk 
to  her  about  both  ;  she  had  haunted  him  in  the  library,  and  her 
presence  there,  once  the  signal  of  antagonism  and  dispute,  had 
ceased  to  have  any  such  meaning  for  him.  Her  sympathy  was 
not  very  intelligent,  and  there  was  at  times  a  childish  note  of 
sulkiness  and  reluctance  in  it ;  she  was  extremely  ready  to  say, 
'  I  told  you  so, '  if  anything  went  wrong  ;  but,  nevertheless,  there 
was  a  tacit  renunciation  at  the  root  of  her  new  manner  to  him 
which  he  perfectly  understood,  and  rewarded  in  his  own  ardent, 
affectionate  way. 

As  she  sauntered  along  in  this  pale  gleam  of  sun,  now  drink- 
ing in  the  soft  April  wind,  now  stooping  to  look  at  the  few  clumps 
of  crocuses  and  daffodils  which  were  pushing  through  the  black- 
ened earth,  Lucy  had  once  more  a  vague  sense  that  her  life  this 
spring — this  past  year — had  been  hard.  It  was  like  the  feeling  of 
one  who  first  realises  the  intensity  of  some  long  effort  or  struggle 
in  looking  back  upon  it.  Her  little  life  had  been  breathed  into 
by  a  divine  breath,  and  growth,  expansion,  had  brought  a  pain 
and  discontent  she  had  never  known  before. 

Dora  meanwhile  had  her  own  thoughts.  She  was  lost  in 
memories  of  that  first  talk  of  hers  with  David  Grieve  after  his 
return  from  Paris,  with  the  marks  of  his  fierce,  mysterious  grief 


CHAP.  VH  MATURITY  517 

fresh  upon  him  ;  then,  pursuing  her  recollection  of  him  through 
the  years,  she  came  to  a  point  of  feeling  where  she  said,  with 
sudden  energy,  throwing  her  arm  round  Lucy,  and  taking  up  the 
thread  of  their  conversation  : — 

'  I  wouldn't  let  what  Louie  said  worry  you  a  bit,  Lucy.  Of 
course,  she  wanted  to  make  mischief  ;  but  you  know,  and  I  know, 
what  sort  of  a  man  David  has  been  since  you  and  he  were 
married.  That'll  be  enough  for  you,  I  should  think.' 

Lucy  flushed.  She  had  once  possessed  very  little  reticence, 
and  had  been  quite  ready  to  talk  her  husband  over,  any  day  and 
all  day,  with  Dora.  But  now,  though  she  would  begin  in  the  old 
way,  there  soon  came  a  point  when  something  tied  her  tongue. 

This  time  she  attacked  the  lilac-bushes  again  with  a  restless 
hand. 

'  Why,  I  thought  you  were  shocked  at  his  opinions,'  she  said, 
proudly. 

Dora  sighed.  Her  conscience  had  not  waited  for  Lucy's 
remark  to  make  her  aware  of  the  constant  perplexity  between 
authority  and  natural  feeling  into  which  David's  ideals  were  per- 
petually throwing  her. 

'  They  make  one  very  sad,'  she  said,  looking  away.  '  But  we 
must  believe  that  God,  who  sees  everything,  judges  as  we  cannot  do. ' 

Lucy  fired  up  at  once.  It  annoyed  her  to  have  Dora  making 
spiritual  allowance  for  David  in  this  way. 

'  I  don't  believe  God  wants  anything  but  that  people  should 
be  good,'  she  said.  '  I  am  sure  there  are  lots  of  things  like  that 
in  the  New  Testament.' 

Dora  shook  her  head  slowly.  '  "  He  that  hath  not  the  Son, 
hath  not  life,"  '  she  said  under  her  breath,  a  sudden  passion 
leaping  to  her  eye. 

Lucy  looked  at  her  indignantly.  'I  don't  agree  with  you, 
Dora — there  !  And  it  all  depends  on  what  things  mean. ' 

'The  meaning  is  quite  plain,'  said  Dora,  with  rigid  persist- 
ence. '  O  Lucy,  don't  be  led  away.  I  missed  you  at  early  service 
this  morning.' 

The  look  she  threw  her  cousin  melted  into  a  pathetic  and 
heavenly  reproach. 

'  We'll,  I  know,'  said  Lucy,  ungraciously,  '  I  was  tired.  I  don't 
know  what's  wrong  with  me  these  last  weeks  ;  I  can't  get  up  in 
the  morning.' 

Dora  only  looked  grieved.  Lucy  understood  that  her  plea 
seemed  to  her  cousin  too  trivial  and  sinful  to  be  noticed. 

'  Oh  I  I  dare  say  I'd  go,'  she  said  in  her  own  mind,  defiantly, 
'  if  he  went. ' 

Aloud,  she  said  : — 

'  Dora,  just  look  at  this  cheek  of  mine  ;  I  can't  think  what  the 
swelling  is.' 

And  she  turned  her  right  cheek  to  Dora,  pointing  to  a  lump, 
not  discoloured,  but  rather  large,  above  the  cheek-bone.  Dora 
stopped,  and  looked  at  it  carefully. 


518  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  Yes,  I  had  noticed  it,'  she  said.  '  It  is  odd.  Can't  you 
account  for  it  in  any  way  ? ' 

'  No.  It's  been  coming  some  little  while.  David  says  I  must 
ask  Dr.  Mildmay  about  it.  I  don't  think  I  shall.  It'll  go  away. 
Oh  !  there  they  are.' 

As  she  spoke,  David  and  Sandy,  who  had  been  out  for  a  Sun- 
day walk  together,  appeared  on  the  steps  of  the  garden-door. 
David  waved  his  hat  to  his  wife,  an  example  immediately  followed 
by  Sandy,  who  twisted  his  Scotch  cap  madly,  and  then  set  off 
running  to  her. 

Lucy  looked  at  them  both  with  a  sudden  softening  and  bright- 
ening which  gave  her  charm.  David  came  up  to  her,  ran  his 
arm  through  hers,  and  began  to  give  her  a  laughing  account  of 
Sandy's  behaviour.  The  April  wind  had  flushed  him,  tumbled  his 
black  hair,  and  called  up  spring  lights  in  the  eyes,  which  had 
been  somewhat  dimmed  by  overmuch  sedentary  work  and  a  too 
small  allowance  of  sleep.  His  plenitude  of  virile  energy,  the 
glow  of  health  and  power  which  hung  round  him  this  afternoon, 
did  but  make  Lucy  seem  more  languid  and  faded  as  she  hung 
upon  him,  smiling  at  his  stories  of  their  walk  and  of  Sandy's 
antics. 

He  broke  off  in  the  middle,  and  looked  at  her  anxiously. 

'  She  isn't  the  thing,  is  she,  Dora  ?  I  believe  she  wants  a 
change.' 

'  Oh  !  thank  you  ! '  cried  Lucy,  ironically — '  with  all  Sandy's 
spring  things  and  my  own  to  look  to,  and  some  new  shirts  to  get 
for  you,  and  the  spring  cleaning  to  see  to.  Much  obliged  to  you.' 

'All  those  things,  madam,'  said  David,  patting  her  hand, 
'  wouldn't  matter  twopence,  if  it  should  please  your  lord  and 
master  to  order  you  off.  And  if  this  fine  weather  goes  on,  you'll 
have  to  take  advantage  of  it.  By  the  way,  I  met  Mildmay,  and 
asked  him  to  come  in  and  see  you. ' 

Lucy  reddened. 

'  Why,  there's  nothing,'  she  said,  pettishly.  '  This  '11  go  away 
directly.'  Instinctively  she  put  up  her  hand  to  her  cheek. 

'Oh!  Mildmay  won't  worry  you,'  said  David  ;  'he'll  tell  you 
what's  wrong  at  once.  You  know  you  like  him.' 

'  Well,  I  must  go,'  said  Dora. 

They  understood  that  she  had  a  mill-girls'  Bible  class  at  half- 
past  five,  and  an  evening  service  an  hour  later,  so  they  did  not 
press  her  to  stay.  Lucy  kissed  her,  and  Sandy  escorted  her  half- 
way to  the  garden-door,  giving  her  a  breathless  and  magniloquent 
account  of  the  '  hy'nas  and  kangawoos  '  she  might  expect  to  find 
congregated  in  the  Merton  Road  outside.  Dora,  who  was  some- 
what distressed  by  his  powers  of  imaginative  fiction,  would  not 
4  play  up '  as  his  father  did,  and  he  left  her  half-way  to  run  back 
to  David,  who  was  always  ready  to  turn  road  and  back  garden 
into  '  Africa  country '  at  a  moment's  notice,  and  people  it  to  order 
with  savages,  elephants,  boomerangs,  kangaroos,  and  all  other 
possible  or  impossible  things  that  Sandy  might  chance  to  want. 


CHAP,  vn  MATURITY  519 

Dora,  looking  back  from  the  garden,  saw  them  all  three  in  a 
group  together — Sandy  tugging  at  his  mother's  skirts,  and  shout- 
ing at  the  top  of  his  voice  ;  David's  curly  black  head  bent  over 
his  wife,  who  was  gathering  her  brown  shawl  round  her  throat,  as 
though  the  light  wind  chilled  her.  But  there  was  no  chill  in  her 
look.  That,  for  the  moment,  as  she  swayed  between  husband 
and  child,  had  in  it  the  qualities  of  the  April  sun — a  brightness 
and  promise  all  the  more  radiant  by  comparison  with  the  winter 
or  the  cloud  from  which  it  had  emerged. 

Dora  went  home  as  quickly  as  tramcar  and  fast  walking  could 
take  her.  She  still  lived  in  the  same  Ancoats  rooms  with  her 
shirt-making  friend,  who  had  kept  company,  poor  thing  !  for 
four  years  with  a  young  man,  and  had  then  given  him  up  with 
anguish  because  he  was  not  '  the  sort  of  man  she'd  been  taking 
him  for,'  though  no  one  but  Dora  had  ever  known  what  qualities 
or  practices,  intolerable  to  a  pure  mind,  the  sad  phrase  covered. 
Dora  might  long  ago  have  moved  to  more  comfortable  rooms  and 
a  better  quarter  of  the  town  had  she  been  so  minded,  for  her 
wages  as  an  admirable  forewoman  and  an  exceptionally  skilled 
hand  were  high ;  but  she  passionately  preferred  to  be  near  St. 
Damian's  and  amongst  her  '  girls. '  Also,  there  was  the  thought 
that  by  staying  in  the  place  whither  she  had  originally  moved 
she  would  be  more  easily  discoverable  if  ever, — ay,  if  ever — 
Daddy  should  come  back  to  her.  She  was  certain  that  he  was 
still  alive  ;  and  great  as  the  probabilities  on  the  other  side  became 
with  every  passing  year,  few  people  had  the  heart  to  insist  upon 
them  in  the  face  of  her  sensitive  faith,  whereof  the  bravery  was 
so  close  akin  to  tears. 

Only  once  in  all  these  years  had  there  been  a  trace  of  Daddy. 
Through  a  silk-merchant  acquaintance  of  his,  having  relations 
with  Lyons  and  other  foreign  centres,  David  had  once  come 
across  a  rumour  which  had  seemed  to  promise  a  clue.  He  had 
himself  gone  across  to  Lyons  at  once,  and  had  done  all  he  could. 
But  the  clue  broke  in  his  hand,  and  the  tanned,  long-faced 
lunatic  from  Manchester,  whereof  report  had  spoken,  could  be 
only  doubtfully  identified  with  a  man  who  bore  no  likeness  at  all 
to  Daddy. 

Dora's  expectation  and  hope  had  been  stirred  to  their  depths, 
and  she  bore  her  disappointment  hardly.  But  she  did  not  there- 
fore cease  to  hope.  Instinctively  on  this  Sunday  night,  when  she 
reached  home,  she  put  Daddy's  chair,  which  had  been  pushed 
aside,  in  its  right  place  by  the  fire,  and  she  tenderly  propped  up 
a  stuffed  bird,  originally  shot  by  Daddy  in  the  Vosges,  and  now 
vilely  overtaken  by  Manchester  moths.  Then  she  set  round  chairs 
and  books  for  her  girls. 

Soon  they  came  trooping  up  the  stairs,  in  their  neat  Sunday 
dresses,  so  sharply  distinguished  from  the  mill-gear  of  the  week, 
and  she  spent  with  them  a  moving  and  mystical  hour.  She  was 
expounding  to  them  a  little  handbook  of  '  The  Blessed  Sacra- 


520  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

ment,'  and  her  explanations  wound  up  with  a  close  appeal  to  each 
one  of  them  to  make  more  use  of  the  means  of  grace,  to  surren- 
der themselves  more  fully  to  the  awful  and  unspeakable  mystery 
by  which  the  Lord  gave  them  His  very  flesh  to  eat,  His  very  blood 
to  drink,  so  fashioning  within  them,  Communion  after  Com- 
munion, the  immortal  and  incorruptible  body  which  should  be 
theirs  in  the  Resurrection. 

She  spoke  in  a  low,  vibrating  voice,  somewhat  monotonous 
in  tone ;  her  eyes  shone  with  strange  light  under  her  round, 
prominent  brow ;  all  that  she  said  of  the  joys  of  frequent  Com- 
munion, of  the  mortal  perils  of  unworthy  participation,  of 
treating  the  heavenly  food  lightly — coming  to  it,  that  is,  unfastlng 
and  unprepared — of  the  need  especially  of  Lenten  self-denial,  of 
giving  up  '  what  each  one  of  you  likes  best,  so  far  as  you  can,' 
in  preparation  for  the  great  Easter  Eucharist — came  evidently 
from  the  depths  of  her  own  intense  conviction.  Her  girls  listened 
to  her  with  answering  excitement  and  awe  ;  one  of  them  she  had 
saved  from  drink,  all  of  them  had  been  her  Sunday-school  chil- 
dren for  years,  and  many  of  them  possessed,  under  the  Lancashire 
exterior,  the  deep-lying  poetry  and  emotion  of  the  North. 

"When  she  dismissed  them  she  hurried  off  to  church,  to  sit  once 
more  dissolved  in  feeling,  aspiration,  penitence  ;  to  feel  the  thrill 
of  the  organ,  the  pathos  of  the  bare  altar,  and  the  Lenten  hymns. 

After  the  service  she  had  two  or  three  things  to  settle  with  one 
of  the  curates  and  with  some  of  her  co-helpers  in  the  good  works 
of  the  congregation,  so  that  when  she  reached  home  she  was  late 
and  tired  out.  Her  fellow-lodger  was  spending  the  Sunday  with 
friends  ;  there  was  no  one  to  talk  to  her  at  her  supper ;  and  after 
supper  she  fell,  sitting  by  the  fire,  into  a  mood  of  some  flatness 
and  reaction.  She  tried  to  read  a  religious  book,  but  the  religious 
nerve  could  respond  no  more,  and  other  interests,  save  those  of 
her  daily  occupations,  she  had  none. 

In  Daddy's  neighbourhood,  what  with  his  travels,  his  whims, 
and  his  quotations,  there  had  been  always  something  to  stir  the 
daughter's  mind,  even  if  it  were  only  to  reprobation.  But  since 
he  had  left  her  the  circle  of  her  thoughts  had  steadily  and  irre- 
vocably narrowed.  All  secular  knowledge,  especially  the  reading 
of  other  than  religious  books,  had  become  gradually  and  painfully 
identified,  for  her,  with  those  sinister  influences  which  made 
David  Grieve  an  '  unbeliever,'  and  so  many  of  the  best  Manchester 
workmen  '  atheists. ' 

So  now,  in  her  physical  and  moral  slackness,  she  sat  and 
thought  with  some  bitterness  of  a  '  young  woman '  who  had 
recently  entered  the  shop  which  employed  her,  and,  by  dint  of  a 
clever  tongue,  was  gaining  the  ear  of  the  authorities,  to  the  dis- 
turbance of  some  of  Dora's  cherished  methods  of  distributing  and 
organising  the  work.  They  might  have  trusted  her  more  after  all 
these  years  ;  but  nobody  appreciated  her  ;  she  counted  for  nothing. 

Then  her  mind  wandered  on  to  the  familiar  grievances  of 
Sandy's  religious  teaching  and  Lucy's  gradual  defection  from 


CHAP,  viz  MATURITY  521 

St.  Damian's.  She  must  make  more  efforts  with  Lucy,  even  if  it 
angered  David.  She  looked  back  on  what  she  had  done  to  bring 
about  the  marriage,  and  lashed  herself  into  a  morbid  sense  of 
responsibility. 

But  her  missionary  projects  were  no  more  cheering  to  her  than 
her  thoughts  about  the  shop  and  her  work,  and  she  felt  an  intense 
sense  of  relief  when  she  heard  the  step  of  her  room-mate,  Mary 
Styles,  upon  the  stairs.  She  made  Mary  go  into  every  little 
incident  of  her  day ;  she  was  insatiable  for  gossip — a  very  rare 
mood  for  her — and  could  not  be  chattered  to  enough. 

And  all  through  she  leant  her  head  against  her  father's  chair, 
recalling  Lucy  on  her  husband's  arm,  and  the  child  at  her  skirts, 
with  the  pathetic  inarticulate  longing  which  makes  the  tragedy 
of  the  single  life.  She  could  have  loved  so  well,  and  no  one  had 
ever  wished  to  make  her  his  wife ;  the  wound  of  it  bled  some- 
times in  her  inmost  heart. 

Meanwhile,  on  this  same  April  Sunday,  Lucy,  after  Sandy  was 
safe  in  bed,  brought  down  some  needlework  to  do  beside  David 
while  he  read.  It  was  not  very  long  since  she  had  induced 
herself  to  make  so  great  a  breach  in  the  Sunday  habits  of  her 
youth.  As  soon  as  David's  ideals  began  to  tease  her  out  of 
thought  and  sympathy,  his  freedoms  also  began  to  affect  her.  She 
was  no  longer  so  much  chilled  by  his  strictness,  or  so  much 
shocked  by  his  laxity. 

David  had  spoken  of  a  busy  evening.  In  reality,  a  lazy  fit 
overtook  him.  He  sat  smoking,  and  turning  over  the  pages  of 
Eckermann's  '  Conversations  with  Goethe. ' 

'  What  are  you  reading  ? '  said  Lucy  at  last,  struck  by  his  face 
of  enjoyment.  '  Why  do  you  like  it  so  much  ? ' 

'  Because  there  is  no  one  else  in  the  world  who  hits  the  right 
nail  on  the  head  so  often  as  Goethe,'  he  said,  throwing  himself 
back  with  a  stretch  of  pleasure.  '  So  wide  a  brain — so  acute  and 
sane  a  temper  ! ' 

Lucy  looked  a  little  lost,  as  she  generally  did  when  David 
made  literary  remarks  to  her.  But  she  did  not  drop  the  subject. 

'You  said  something  to  Professor  Madgwick  the  other  day 
about  a  line  of  Goethe  you  used  to  like  so  when  you  were  a  boy. 
What  did  it  mean  ? ' 

She  flushed,  as  though  she  were  venturing  on  something  which 
would  make  her  ridiculous. 

'  A  line  of  Goethe  ? '  repeated  David,  pondering.  '  Oh  !  I 
know.  Yes,  it  was  a  line  from  Goethe's  novel  of  "Werther." 
When  I  was  young  and  foolish — when  you  and  I  were  first 
acquainted,  in  fact,  and  you  used  to  scold  me  for  going  to  the 
Hall  of  Science  ! — I  often  said  this  line  to  myself  over  and  over. 
I  didn't  know  much  German,  but  the  swing  of  it  carried  me  away.' 

And,  with  a  deep  voice  and  rhythmic  accent,  he  repeated : 
'  Handwerker  trugen  ihn  ;  kein  Geistlicher  hat  ihn  begleitet.'1 

1  What  does  it  mean  ? '  said  Lucy. 


522  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

*  "Well,  it  comes  at  the  end  of  the  story.  The  hero  commits 
suicide  for  love,  and  Goethe  says  that  at  his  burial,  on  the  night 
after  his  death,  ' '  labouring  men  bore  him ;  no  priest  went  with 
him."' 

He  bent  forward,  clasping  his  hands  tightly,  with  the  half 
smiling,  half  dreamy  look  of  one  who  recalls  a  bygone  thrill  of 
feeling,  partly  in  sympathy,  partly  in  irony. 

'  Then  he  wasn't  a  Christian  ? '  said  Lucy,  wondering.  '  Do 
you  still  hate  priests  so  much,  David  ? ' 

'  It  doesn't  look  like  it,  does  it,  madam,'  he  said,  laughing, 
'  when  you  think  of  all  my  clergymen  friends  ? ' 

And,  in  fact,  as  Lucy's  mind  pondered  his  answer,  she  easily 
remembered  the  readiness  with  which  any  of  the  clergy  at  St. 
Damian's  would  ask  his  help  in  sending  away  a  sick  child,  or 
giving  a  man  a  fresh  start  in  life,  or  setting  the  necessary  authori- 
ties to  work  in  the  case  of  some  moral  or  sanitary  scandal.  She 
thought  also  of  various  Dissenting  ministers  who  called  on  him 
and  corresponded  with  him  ;  of  his  reverent  affection  for  Canon 
Aylwin,  for  Ancrum. 

'  Well,  anyway,  you  care  about  the  labouring  men,'  she  went 
on  persistently.  '  I  suppose  you're  what  father  used  to  call  a 
"  canting  Socialist "  ? ' 

'  No,'  said  David,  quietly — 'no,  I'm  not  a  Socialist,  except '- 
and  he  smiled — '  in  the  sense  in  which  some  one  said  the  other 
day,  "we  are  all  Socialists  now."  ' 

'  Well,  what  does  it  mean  ? '  said  Lucy,  threading  another 
needle,  and  feeling  a  certain  excitement  in  this  prolonged  mental 
effort. 

David  tried  to  explain  to  her  the  common  Socialist  ideal  in 
simple  terms — the  hope  of  a  millennium,  when  all  the  instruments 
of  production  shall  be  owned  by  the  State,  and  when  the  surplus 
profit  produced  by  labour,  over  and  above  the  maintenance  of  the 
worker  and  the  general  cost  of  production,  will  go,  not  to  the 
capitalist,  the  individual  rich  man,  but  to  the  whole  community 
of  workers  ;  when  everybody  will  be  made  to  work,  and  as  little 
advantage  as  possible  will  be  allowed  to  one  worker  above  another. 

'  I  think  it's  absurd  ! '  said  Lucy,  up  in  arms  at  once  for  all 
the  superiorities  she  loved.  '  What  nonsense  !  Why,  they  can't 
ever  do  it ! ' 

'  Well,  it's  about  that ! '  said  David,  smiling  at  her.  '  Still,  no 
doubt  it  could  be  done,  if  it  ought  to  be  done.  But  Socialism,  as 
a  system,  seems  to  me,  at  any  rate,  to  strike  down  and  weaken  the 
most  precious,  thing  in  the  world,  that  on  which  the  whole  of 
civilised  life  and  progress  rests — the  spring  of  will  and  conscience 
in  the  individual.  Socialism  as  a  spirit,  as  an  influence,  is  as  old 
as  organised  thought — and  from  the  beginning  it  has  forced  us  to 
think  of  the  many  when  otherwise  we  should  be  sunk  in  thinking 
of  the  one.  But,  as  a  modern  dogmatism,  it  is  like  other  dogma- 
tisms. The  new  truth  of  the  future  will  emerge  from  it  as  a  bud 
from  its  sheath,  taking  here  and  leaving  there.' 


CHAP,  vii  MATURITY  523 

He  sat  looking  into  the  fire,  forgetting  his  wife  a  little. 

'  Well,  any  way,  I'm  sure  you  and  I  won't  have  anything  to 
do  with  it,'  said  Lucy  positively.  'I  don't  a  bit  believe  Lady 
Driffield  will  have  to  work  in  the  mills,  though  Mrs.  Shepton  did 
say  it  would  do  her  good.  I  shouldn't  mind  something,  perhaps, 
which  would  make  her  and  Colonel  Danby  less  uppish. ' 

She  drew  her  needle  in  and  out  with  vindictive  energy. 

'  Well,  I  don't  see  much  prospect  of  uppish  people  dying  out 
of  the  world,'  said  David,  throwing  himself  back  in  his  chair ; 
'until—' 

He  paused. 

'  Until  what  ? '  inquired  Lucy. 

'  Well,  of  course,'  he  said  after  a  minute,  in  a  low  voice,  '  we 
must  always  hold  that  the  world  is  tending  to  be  better,  that  the 
Divine  Life  in  it  will  somehow  realise  itself,  that  pride  will  become 
gentleness,  and  selfishness  love.  But  the  better  life  cannot  be 
imposed  from  without — it  must  grow  from  within.' 

Lucy  pondered  a  moment. 

'  Then  is  it — is  it  because  you  think  working-men  better  than 
other  people  that  you  are  so  much  more  interested  in  them  ? 
Because  you  are,  you  know.' 

'  Oh  dear  no  ! '  he  said,  smiling  at  her  from  under  the  hand 
which  shaded  his  eyes  ;  '  they  have  their  own  crying  faults  and 
follies.  But — so  many  of  them  lack  the  first  elementary  condi- 
tions which  make  the  better  life  possible — that  is  what  tugs  at 
one's  heart  and  fills  one's  mind  !  How  can  we — we  who  have 
gained  for  ourselves  health  and  comfort  and  knowledge — how  can 
we  stand  by  patiently  and  see  our  brother  diseased  and  miserable 
and  ignorant  ? — how  can  we  bear  our  luxuries,  so  long  as  a  child 
is  growing  up  in  savagery  whom  we  might  have  taught, — or  a 
man  is  poisoning  himself  with  drink  whom  we  might  have  saved, 
— or  a  woman  is  dropping  from  sorrow  and  overwork  whom  we 
might  have  cherished  and  helped  ?  We  are  not  our  own — we  are 
parts  of  the  whole.  Generations  of  workers  have  toiled  for  us  in 
the  past.  And  are  we,  in  return,  to  carry  our  wretched  bone  off 
to  our  own  miserable  corner  ! — sharing  and  giving  nothing  ?  Woe 
to  us  if  we  do  !  Upon  such  comes  indeed  the  "  second  death,"— 
the  separation  final  and  irretrievable,  as  far,  at  any  rate,  as  this 
world  is  concerned,  between  us  and  the  life  of  God  ! ' 

Lucy  had  dropped  her  work.  She  sat  staring  at  him — at  the 
shining  eyes,  at  the  hand  against  the  brow  which  shook  a  little, 
at  the  paleness  which  went  so  readily  in  him  with  any  expression 
of  deep  emotion.  Never  had  he  so  spoken  to  her  before  ;  never, 
all  these  years.  In  general  no  one  shrank  more  than  he  from 
'  high  phrases ; '  no  one  was  more  anxious  than  he  to  give  all 
philanthropic  talk  a  shrewd  business-like  aspect,  which  might 
prevent  questions  as  to  what  lay  beneath. 

Her  heart  fluttered  a  little. 

'  David  ! '  she  broke  out,  '  what  is  it  you  believe  ?  You  know 
Dora  thinks  you  believe  nothing.' 


524  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  Does  she  ? '  he  said,  with  evident  shrinking.  '  No,  I  don't 
think  she  does.' 

Lucy  instinctively  moved  her  chair  closer  to  him,  and  laid  her 
head  against  his  knee. 

'  Yes,  she  does.  But  I  don't  mind  about  that.  I  just  wish 
you'd  tell  me  why  you  believe  in  God,  when  you  won't  go  to 
church,  and  when  you  think  Jesus  was  just — just  a  man.' 

She  drew  her  breath  quickly.  She  was  making  a  first  voyage 
of  discovery  in  her  husband's  deepest  mind,  and  she  was  asto- 
nished at  her  own  venturesomeness. 

He  put  out  a  hand  and  touched  her  hair. 

'  I  can't  read  Nature  and  life  any  other  way,'  he  said  at  last, 
after  a  silence.  '  There  seems  to  me  something  in  myself,  and  in 
other  human  beings,  which  is  beyond  Nature — which,  instead  of 
being  made  by  Nature,  is  the  condition  of  our  knowing  there  is  a 
Nature  at  all.  This  something — reason,  consciousness,  soul,  call 
it  what  you  will — unites  us  to  the  world  ;  for  everywhere  in  the 
world  reason  is  at  home,  and  gradually  finds  itself  ;  it  makes  us 
aware  of  a  great  order  in  which  we  move  ;  it  breaks  down  the 
barriers  of  sense  between  us  and  the  absolute  consciousness,  the 
eternal  life — "  not  ourselves,"  yet  in  us  and  akin  to  us  ! — whence, 
if  there  is  any  validity  in  human  logic,  that  order  must  spring. 
And  so,  in  its  most  perfect  work,  it  carries  us  to  God — it  bids  us 
claim  our  sonship — it  gives  us  hope  of  immortality  ! ' 

His  voice  had  the  vibrating  intensity  of  prayer.  Lucy  hardly 
understood  what  he  said  at  all,  but  the  tears  came  into  her  eyes 
as  she  sat  hiding  them  against  his  knee. 

'  But  what  makes  you  think  God  is  good — that  He  cares  any- 
thing about  us  ? '  she  said  softly. 

'  Well — I  look  back  on  human  life,  and  I  ask  what  reason — 
which  is  the  Divine  Life  communicated  to  us,  striving  to  fulfil 
itself  in  us — has  done,  what  light  it  throws  upon  its  "great 
Original."  And  then  I  see  that  it  has  gradually  expressed  itself 
in  law,  in  knowledge,  in  love  ;  that  it  has  gradually  learnt,  under 
the  pressure  of  something  which  is  itself  and  not  itself,  that  to  be 
gained  life  must  be  lost ;  that  beauty,  truth,  love,  are  the  realities 
which  abide.  Goodness  has  slowly  proved  itself  in  the  world, — is 
every  day  proving  itself, — like  a  light  broadening  in  darkness  ! — 
to  be  that  to  which  reason  tends,  in  which  it  realises  itself.  And, 
if  so,  goodness  here,  imperfect  and  struggling  as  we  see  it  always, 
must  be  the  mere  shadow  and  hint  of  that  goodness  which  is  in 
God  ! — and  the  utmost  we  can  conceive  of  human  tenderness, 
holiness,  truth,  though  it  tell  us  all  we  know,  can  yet  suggest  to 
us  only  the  minutest  fraction  of  what  must  be  the  Divine  tender- 
ness,— holiness, — truth.' 

There  was  a  silence. 

'  But  this,'  he  added  after  a  bit,  '  is  not  to  be  proved  by  argu- 
ment, though  argument  is  necessary  and  inevitable,  the  mind 
being  what  it  is.  It  can  only  be  proved  by  living, — by  taking  it 
into  our  hearts, — by  every  little  victory  we  gain  over  the  evil  self.' 


CHAP,  vii  MATURITY  525 

The  fire  burnt  quietly  beside  them.  Everything  was  still  in 
the  house.  Nothing  stirred  but  their  own  hearts. 

At  last  Lucy  looked  up  quickly. 

'  I  am  glad,'  she  said  with  a  kind  of  sob — '  glad  you  think 
God  loves  us,  and,  if  Sandy  and  I  were  to  die,  you  would  find  us 
again. ' 

Instead  of  answering,  he  bent  forward  quickly  and  kissed  her. 
She  gave  a  little  shrinking  movement. 

'  Oh  1  that  poor  cheek ! '  he  said  remorsefully  ;  '  did  I  touch 
it  ?  I  hope  Dr.  Mildmay  won't  forget  to-morrow.' 

'  Oh  !  never  mind  about  it,'  she  said,  half  impatiently. 
4  David ! ' 

Her  little  thin  face  twitched  and  trembled.  He  was  puzzled 
by  her  sudden  change  of  expression,  her  agitation. 

'  David  ! — you  know — you  know  what  Louie  said.  I  want  you 
to  tell  me  whether  she — she  meant  anything. ' 

He  gave  a  little  start,  then  he  understood  perfectly. 

'  My  dear  wife,'  he  said,  laying  his  hand  on  hers,  which  were 
crossed  on  his  knee. 

She  waited  breathlessly. 

'  You  shall  know  all  there  is  to  know,'  lie  said  at  last,  with 
an  effort.  '  I  thought  perhaps  you  would  have  questioned  me 
directly  after  that  scene,  and  I  would  have  told  you  ;  but  as  you 
did  not,  I  could  not  bring  myself  to  begin.  What  Louie  said  had 
to  do  with  things  that  happened  a  year  before  I  asked  you  to  be 
my  wife.  When  I  spoke  to  you,  they  were  dead  and  gone.  The 
girl  herself — was  married.  It  was  her  story  as  well  as  my  own, 
and  it  seemed  to  concern  no  one  else  in  the  world — not  even 
you,  dear.  So  I  thought  then,  any  way.  Since,  I  have  often 
wondered  whether  I  was  right. ' 

'  Was  it  when  you  were  in  Paris  ? '  she  asked  sharply. 

He  gave  a  sign  of  assent. 

'  I  thought  so  I '  she  cried,  drawing  her  breath.  '  I  always 
said  there  was  more  than  being  ill.  I  said  so  to  Dora.  Well,  tell 
me — tell  me  at  once  !  What  was  she  like  ?  Was  she  young,  and 
good-looking  ? ' 

He  could  not  help  smiling  at  her — there  was  something  so 
childish  in  her  jealous  curiosity. 

'  Let  me  tell  you  in  order, '  he  said,  '  and  then  we  will  both 
put  it  out  of  sight — at  least,  till  1  see  Louie  again. ' 

His  heavy  sigh  puzzled  her.  But  her  strained  and  eager  eyes 
summoned  him  to  begin. 

He  told  her  everything,  with  singular  simplicity  and  frank- 
ness. To  Lucy  it  was  indeed  a  critical  and  searching  moment ! 
No  wife,  whatever  stuff  she  may  be  made  of,  can  listen  to  such  a 
story  for  the  first  time,  from  the  husband  she  loves  and  respects, 
without  passing  thereafter  into  a  new  state  of  consciousness 
towards  him.  Sometimes  she  could  hardly  realise  at  all  that  it 
applied  to  David,  this  tale  of  passion  he  was  putting,  with  averted 
face,  into  these  short  and  sharp  sentences.  That  conception  of 


526  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  TV 

him  which  the  daily  life  of  eight  years,  with  its  growing  self- 
surrender,  its  expanding  spiritual  force,  had  graven  on  her  mind, 
clashed  so  oddly  with  all  that  he  was  saying  !  A  certain  desolate 
feeling,  too  large  and  deep  in  all  its  issues  to  be  harboured  long 
in  her  slight  nature,  came  over  her  now  and  then.  She  had  been 
so  near  to  him  all  these  years,  and  had  yet  known  nothing.  It 
was  the  separateness  of  the  individual  lot — that  awful  and  myste- 
rious chasm  which  divides  even  lover  from  lover — which  touched 
her  here  and  there  like  a  cold  hand,  from  which  she  shrank. 

She  grew  a  little  cold  and  pale  when  he  spoke  of  his  weeks  of 
despair,  of  the  death  from  which  Ancrum  had  rescued  him.  But 
any  ordinary  prudish  word  of  blame,  even  for  his  silence  towards 
her,  never  occurred  to  her.  Once  she  asked  him  a  wistful  ques- 
tion : — 

'  You  and  she  thought  that  marrying  didn't  matter  at  all  when 
people  loved  each  other — that  nobody  had  a  right  to  interfere  ? 
Do  you  think  that  now,  David  ? ' 

'No,'  he  said,  with  deep  emphasis.  'No. — I  have  come  to 
think  the  most  disappointing  and  hopeless  marriage,  nobly  borne, 
to  be  better  worth  having  than  what  people  call  an  "ideal 
passion," — if  the  ideal  passion  must  be  enjoyed  at  the  expense  of 
one  of  those  fundamental  rules  which  poor  human  nature  has 
worked  out,  with  such  infinite  difficulty  and  pain,  for  the  protec- 
tion and  help  of  its  own  weakness.  I  did  not  know  it, — but,  so 
far  as  in  me  lay,  I  was  betraying  and  injuring  that  society  which 
has  given  me  all  I  have.' 

She  sat  silent.  '  The  most  disappointing  marriage.'  An 
echo  from  that  overheard  talk  at  Benet's  Park  floated  through  her 
mind.  She  winced,  and  shrank,  even  as  she  realised  his  perfect 
innocence  of  any  such  reference. 

Then,  with  eagerness,  she  threw  herself  into  innumerable 
questions  about  Elise — her  looks,  her  motives,  the  details  of  what 
she  said  and  did.  Beneath  th.e  satisfaction  of  her  curiosity,  of 
course,  there  was  all  the  time  a  pang — a  pang  not  to  be  silenced. 
In  her  flights  of  idle  fancy  she  had  often  suspected  something  not 
unlike  the  truth,  basing  her  conjecture  on  the  mystery  which  had 
always  hung  round  that  Paris  visit,  partly  on  the  world's  general 
experience  of  what  happened  to  handsome  young  men.  For,  in 
her  heart  of  hearts,  had  there  not  lurked  all  the  time  a  wonder 
which  was  partly  self -judgment  ?  Had  David,  with  such  a 
temperament,  never  been  more  deeply  moved  than  she  knew 
herself  to  have  moved  him  ?  More  than  once  a  secret  inarticulate 
suspicion  of  this  kind  had  crossed  her.  The  poorest  and  shallow- 
est soul  may  have  these  flashes  of  sad  insight,  under  the  kindling 
of  its  affections. 

But  now  she  knew,  and  the  difference  was  vast.  After  she 
had  asked  all  her  questions,  and  delivered  a  vehement  protest 
against  the  tenacity  of  his  self-reproach  with  regard  to  Louie — for 
what  decent  girl  need  go  wrong  unless  she  has  a  mind  to  ? — she 
laid  her  head  down  again  on  David's  knee. 


CHAP,  vin  MATURITY  527 

'  I  don't  think  she  cared  much  about  you — I'm  sure  she 
couldn't  have,'  she  said  slowly,  finding  a  certain  pleasure  in  the 
words. 

David  did  not  answer.  He  was  sunk  in  memory.  How  far 
away  lay  that  world  of  art  and  the  artist  from  this  dusty,  practical 
life  in  which  he  was  now  immersed !  At  no  time  had  he  been 
really  akin  to  it.  The  only  art  to  which  he  was  naturally  suscep- 
tible was  the  art  of  oratory  and  poetry.  Elise  had  created  in  him 
an  artificial  taste,  which  had  died  with  his  passion.  Yet  now,  as 
his  quickened  mind  lingered  in  the  past,  he  felt  a  certain  wide 
philosophic  regret  for  the  complete  divorce  which  had  come  about 
between  him  and  so  rich  a  section  of  human  experience. 

He  was  roused  from  his  reverie,  which  would  have  reassured 
her,  could  she  have  followed  it,  more  than  any  direct  speech,  by  a 
movement  from  Lucy.  Dropping  the  hand  which  had  once  more 
stolen  over  his  brow,  he  saw  her  looking  at  him  with  wide,  wet 
eyes. 

'  David  1 ' 

'Yes.' 

'  Come  here  1  close  to  me  I ' 

He  moved  forward,  and  laid  his  arm  round  her  shoulders,  as 
she  sat  in  her  low  chair  beside  him. 

'  What  is  it,  dear  ?    I  have  been  keeping  you  up  too  late.' 

She  lifted  a  hand,  and  brought  his  face  near  to  hers. 

'  David,  I  am  a  stupid  little  thing — but  I  do  understand  more 
than  I  did,  and  I  would  never,  never  desert  you  for  anything, — 
for  any  sorrow  or  trouble  in  the  world  ! ' 

The  mixture  of  yearning,  pain,  triumphant  affection  in  her 
tone,  cannot  be  rendered  in  words. 

His  whole  heart  melted  to  her.  As  he  held  her  to  his  breast, 
the  hour  they  had  just  passed  through  took  for  both  of  them  a 
sacred  meaning  and  importance.  Youth  was  going — their  talk 
had  not  been  the  talk  of  youth.  Was  true  love  just  beginning  ? 

CHAPTER  VIII 

God!  My  God!' 

The  cry  was  David's.  He  had  reeled  back  against  the  table 
in  his  study,  his  hand  upon  an  open  book,  his  face  turned  to 
Doctor  Mildmay,  who  was  standing  by  the  fireplace. 

'Of  course,  I  can't  be  sure,'  said  the  doctor  hastily,  almost 
guiltily.  '  You  must  not  take  it  on  my  authority  alone.  Try 
and  throw  it  off  your  mind.  Take  your  wife  up  to  town  to  see 
Selby  or  Paget,  and  if  I  am  wrong  I  shall  be  too  thankful ! 
And,  above  all,  don't  frighten  her.  Take  care — she  will  be  down 
again  directly.' 

'You  say,'  said  David,  thickly,  'that  if  it  were  what  you 
suspect,  operation  would  be  difficult.  Yes,  I  see  there  is  some- 
thing of  the  sort  here.' 

He  turned,  shaking  all  over,  to  the  book  beside  him,  which 


528  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

was  a  medical  treatise  he  had  just  taken  down  from  his  scientific 
bookcase. 

'It  would  be  certainly  difficult,'  said  the  doctor,  frowning, 
his  lower  lip  pushed  forward  in  a  stress  of  thought,  '  but  it 
would  have  to  be  attempted.  Only,  on  the  temporal  bone  it  will 
be  a  puzzle  to  go  deep  enough. ' 

David's  eye  ran  along  the  page  beside  him.  '  Sarcoma,  which 
was  originally  regarded  with-  far  less  terror  than  cancer  (carci- 
noma), is  now  generally  held  by  doctors  to  be  more  malignant  and 
more  deadly.  There  is  much  less  pain,  but  siirgery  can  do  less, 
and  death  is  in  most  cases  infinitely  more  rapid.' 

'  Hush  ! '  said  the  doctor,  with  short  decision,  '  I  hear  her 
coming  down  again.  Let  me  speak.' 

Lucy,  who  had  run  upstairs  to  quiet  a  yell  of  crying  from 
Sandy  immediately  after  Doctor  Mildmay  had  finished  his  exami- 
nation of  her  swollen  cheek,  opened  the  door  as  he  spoke.  She 
was  slightly  flushed,  and  her  eyes  were  more  wide  open  and 
restless  than  usual.  David  was  apparently  bending  over  a  drawer 
which  he  had  opened  on  the  farther  side  of  his  writing-table. 
The  doctor's  face  was  entirely  as  usual. 

'Well  now,  Mrs.  Grieve,'  he  said  cheerily,  'we  have  been 
agreeing — your  husband  and  I — that  it  will  be  best  for  you  to  go 
up  to  London  and  have  that  cheek  looked  at  by  one  of  the  crack 
surgeons.  They  will  give  you  the  best  advice  as  to  what  to  do 
with  it.  It  is  not  a  common  ailment,  and  we  are  very  fine  fel- 
lows down  here,  but  of  course  we  can't  get  the  experience,  in  a 
particular  line  of  cases,  of  one  of  the  first-rate  surgical  specialists. 
Do  you  think  you  could  go  to-morrow  ?  I  could  make  an  ap- 
pointment for  you  by  telegraph  to-day. '' 

Lucy  gave  a  little  unsteady,  affected  laugh. 

'  I  don't  see  how  I  can  go  all  in  a  moment  like  that,'  she  said. 
*  It  doesn't  matter  I  Why  don't  you  give  me  something  for  it, 
and  it  will  go  away.' 

'Oh!  but  it  does  matter,'  said  the  doctor,  firmly.  'Lumps 
like  that  are  serious  things,  and  mustn't  be  trifled  with.' 

'But  what  will  they  want  to  do  to  it  ?'  said  Lucy  nervously. 
She  was  standing  with  one  long,  thin  hand  resting  lightly  on  the 
back  of  a  chair,  looking  from  David,  whose  face  and  figure  were 
blurred  to  her  by  the  dazzle  of  afternoon  light  coming  in  through 
the  window,  to  Doctor  Mildmay. 

The  doctor  cleared  his  throat. 

'  They  would  only  want  to  do  what  was  best  for  you  in  every 
way,'  he  said;  'you  may  be  sure  of  that.  Could  yon  be  very 
brave  if  they  advised  you  that  it  ought  to  be  removed  ?' 

She  gave  a  little  shriek. 

'  What !  you  mean  cut  it  out — cut  it  away  ! '  she  cried,  shak- 
ing, and  looking  at  him  with  the  frowning  anger  of  a  child. 
'  Why,  it  would  leave  an  ugly  mark,  a  hideous  mark  ! ' 

'No,  it  wouldn't.  The  mark  would  disfigure  you  much  less 
than  the  swelling.  They  would  take  care  to  draw  the  skin  to- 


CHAP,  vin  MATURITY  529 

gether  again  neatly,  and  you  could  easily  arrange  your  hair  a 
little.  But  you  ought  to  get  a  first-rate  opinion.' 

'What  is  it?  what  do  you  call  it?'  said  Lucy,  irritably.  'I 
can't  think  why  you  make  such  a  fuss.' 

'Well,  it  might  be  various  things,'  he  said  evasively.  'Any 
way,  you  take  my  advice,  and  have  it  seen  to.  I  can  telegraph 
as  I  go  from  here.' 

'  I  could  take  you  up  to-morrow,'  said  David,  coming  forward 
in  answer  to  the  disturbed  look  she  threw  him.  Now  that  her 
flush  had  faded,  how  pale  and  drooping  she  was  iu  the  strong 
light  !  'It  would  be  better,  dear,  to  do  what  Doctor  Mildmay 
recommends.  And  you  never  mind  a  day  in  London,  you  know.' 

Did  she  detect  any  difference  in  the  voice?  She  moved  up 
to  him,  and  he  put  his  arm  round  her. 

'Must  I?'  she  said,  helplessly;  'it's  such  a  bore,  to-morrow 
particularly.  I  had  promised  to  take  Sandy  out  to  tea.' 

'  AVell,  let  that  young  man  go  without  a  treat  for  once,'  said 
the  doctor,  laughing.  '  He  has  a  deal  too  many,  anyway.  Very 
well,  that's  settled.  I  will  telegraph  as  I  go  to  the  train.  Just 
come  here  a  moment,  Grieve.' 

The  two  went  out  together.  When  David  returned,  any  one 
who  had  happened  to  be  in  the  hall  would  have  seen  that  he 
could  hardly  open  the  sitting-room  door,  so  fumbling  were  his 
movements.  As  he  passed  through  the  room  to  reach  the  study 
he  caught  sight  of  his  own  face  in  a  glass,  and  stopping,  with 
clenched  hands,  pulled  himself  together  by  the  effort  of  his  whole 
being. 

When  he  opened  the  study-door,  Lucy  was  hunting  about  his 
table  in  a  quick,  impatient  way. 

'  I  can't  think  where  you  keep  your  indiarubber  rings,  David. 
I  want  to  put  one  round  a  parcel  for  Dora.' 

He  found  one  for  her.  Then  she  stood  by  the  fire,  as  the 
sunset-light  faded  into  dusk,  and  poured  out  to  him  a  story  of 
domestic  grievances.  Sarah,  their  cook,  wished  to  leave  and  be 
married — it  was  very  unexpected  and  very  inconsiderate,  and 
Lucy  did  not  believe  the  young  man  was  steady  ;  and  how  on 
earth  was  she  to  find  another  cook  ?  It  was  enough  to  drive  one 
wild,  the  difficulty  of  getting  cooks  in  Manchester. 

For  nearly  an  hour,  till  the  supper-bell  rang,  she  stood  there, 
with  her  foot  on  the  fender,  chattering  in  a  somewhat  sharp, 
shrill  way.  Not  one  word  would  she  say,  or  let  him  say,  of 
London  or  the  doctor's  visit. 

After  supper,  as  they  went  back  into  the  study,  David  looked 
for  the  railway-guide.  'The  10.15  will  do,'  he  said.  'Mildmay 
has  made  the  appointment  for  three.  We  can  just  get  up  in  time.' 

1  It  is  great  nonsense  ! '  said  Lucy,  pouting.  '  The  question  is, 
can  we  get  back  ?  I  must  get  back.  I  don't  want  to  leave  Sandy 
for  the  night.  He's  got  a  cold.' 

It  seemed  to  David  that  something  clutched  at  his  breath  and 
voice.  Was  it  he  or  some  one  else  that  said  : — 


530  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

'That  will  be  too  tiring,  dear.  We  shall  have  to  stay  the 
night.' 

'  No,  I  must  get  back,'  said  Lucy,  obstinately. 

Afterwards  she  brought  her  work  as  usual,  "and  he  professed 
to  smoke  and  read.  But  the  evening  passed,  for  him,  beneath 
his  outward  quiet,  in  a  hideous  whirl  of  images  and  sensations, 
which  ultimately  wore  itself  out,  and  led  to  a  mood  of  dulness 
and  numbness.  Every  now  and  then,  as  he  sat  there,  with  the 
fire  crackling,  and  the  familiar  walls  and  books  about  him,  he 
felt  himself  sinking,  as  it  were,  in  a  sudden  abyss  of  horror ; 
then,  again,  the  scene  of  the  afternoon  seemed  to  him  absurd, 
and  he  despised  his  own  panic.  He  dwelt  upon  everything  the 
doctor  had  said  about  the  rarity,  the  exceptional  nature  of  such 
an  illness.  Well,  what  is  rare  does  not  happen — not  to  oneself — 
that  was  what  he  seemed  to  be  clinging  to  at  last. 

When  Lucy  went  up  to  bed,  he  followed  her  in  about  a 
quarter  of  an  hour. 

'  Why,  you  are  early  ! '  she  said,  opening  her  eyes. 

'I  am  tired,'  he  said.  'There  was  a  great  press  of  work 
to-day.  I  want  a  long  night.' 

In  reality,  he  could  not  bear  her  out  of  his  sight.  Hour  after 
hour  he  tossed  restlessly,  beside  her  quiet  sleep,  till  the  spring 
morning  broke. 

They  left  Manchester  next  morning  in  a  bitter  east  wind.  As 
she  passed  through  the  hall  to  the  cab,  Lucy  left  a  little  note  for 
Dora  on  the  table,  with  instructions  that  it  should  be  posted. 

'I  want  her  to  come  and  see  him  at  his  bedtime,'  she  said, 
'for  of  course  we  can't  get  back  for  that.' 

David  said  nothing.  When  they  got  to  the  station,  he  dared 
not  even  propose  to  her  the  extra  comfort  of  first  class,  lest  he 
should  intensify  the  alarm  he  perfectly  well  divined  under  her 
offhand,  flighty  manner. 

By  three  o'clock  they  were  in  the  waiting-room  of  the  famous 
doctor  they  had  come  to  see.  Lucy  looked  round  her  nervously 
as  they  entered,  with  quick,  dilating  nostrils,  and  across  David 
there  swept  a  sudden  choking  memory  of  the  trapped  and  flut- 
tering birds  he  had  sometimes  seen  in  his  boyhood  struggling 
beneath  a  birdcatcher's  net  on  the  moors. 

As  the  appointment  was  at  an  unusual  time,  they  were  not 
kept  waiting  very  long  by  the  great  man.  He  received  them  with 
a  sort  of  kindly  distance,  made  his  examination  very  quickly,  and 
asked  her  a  number  of  general  questions,  entering  the  answers 
in  his  large  patients'  book. 

Then  he  leant  back  in  his  chair,  looking  thoughtfully  at  Lucy 
over  his  spectacles. 

'  Well,'  he  said  at  last,  with  a  perfectly  cheerful  and  business- 
like voice,  '  I  am  quite  clear  there  is  only  one  thing  to  be  done, 
Mrs.  Grieve.  You  must  have  that  growth  removed.' 

Lucy  flushed. 


CHAP,  vin  MATURITY  531 

'I  want  you  to  give  me  something  to  take  it  away,'  she  said, 
half  sullenly,  half  defiantly.  She  was  sitting  very  erect,  in  a 
little  tight-fitting  black  jacket,  with  her  small  black  hat  and  veil 
on  her  knee. 

1  No,  I  am  sorry  to  say  nothing  can  be  done  in  that  way.  If 
you  were  my  daughter  or  sister,  I  should  say  to  you,  have  that 
lump  removed  without  a  day's,  an  hour's  unnecessary  delay. 
These  growths  are  not  to  be  trifled  with.' 

He  spoke  with  a  mild  yet  penetrating  observance  of  her. 
A  number  of  reflections  were  passing  rapidly  through  his  mind. 
The  operation  was  a  most  unpromising  one,  but  it  was  clearly  the 
surgeon's  duty  to  try  it.  The  chances  were  that  it  would  prolong 
life  which  was  now  speedily  and  directly  threatened,  owing  to 
the  proximity  of  the  growth  to  certain  vital  points. 

4  When  could  you  do  it?'  said  David,  so  hoarsely  that  he  had 
to  repeat  his  question.  He  was  standing  with  his  arm  on  the 
mantelpiece,  looking  down  on  the  surgeon  and  his  wife. 

The  great  man  lifted  his  eyebrows,  and  looked  at  his  engage- 
ment-book attentively. 

'I  could  do  it  to-morrow,'  he  said  at  last ;  'and  the  sooner, 
the  better.  Have  you  got  lodgings  ?  or  can  I  help  you  ?  And — 

Then  he  stopped,  and  looked  at  Lucy.  '  Let  me  settle  things 
with  your  husband,  Mrs.  Grieve,'  he  said,  with  a  kindly  smile. 
'You  look  tired  after  your  journey.  You  will  find  a  fire  and 
some  newspapers  in  the  waiting-room.' 

And,  with  a  suavity  not  to  be  gainsaid,  he  ushered  her  him- 
self across  the  hall,  and  shut  the  waiting-room  door  upon  her. 
Then  he  came  back  to  David. 

A  little  while  after  a  bell  rang,  and  the  man-servant  who 
answered  it  presently  took  some  brandy  into  the  consulting- 
room.  Lucy  meanwhile  sat,  in  a  dazed  way,  looking  out  of 
window  at  £he  square  garden,  where  the  lilacs  were  already  in 
full  leaf  in  spite  of  the  east  wind. 

When  her  husband  and  the  doctor  came  in  she  sprang  up, 
looking  partly  awkward,  partly  resentful.  Why  had  they  been 
discussing  it  all  without  her  ? 

'Well,  Mrs.  Grieve,' said  the  doctor,  'your  husband  is  just 
going  to  take*  you  on  to  see  the  lodgings  I  recommend.  By  good 
luck  they  are  just  vacant.  Then,  if  you  like  them,  you  know, 
you  can  settle  in  at  once.' 

'  But  I  haven't  brought  anything  for  the  night,1  cried  Lucy  in 
an  injured  voice,  looking  at  David. 

'  We  will  telegraph  to  Dora,  darling,'  he  said,  taking  up  her 
bag  and  umbrella  from  the  table  ;  '  but  now  we  mustn't  keep  Mr. 
Selby.  He  has  to  go  out.' 

'  How  long  will  it  take  ? '  interrupted  Lucy,  addressing  the 
surgeon.  '  Can  I  get  back  next  day  ? ' 

'  Oh  no  !  you  will  have  to  be  four  or  five  days  in  town.  But 
don't  alarm  yourself,  Mrs.  Grieve.  You  won't  know  anything  at 
all  about  the  operation  itself ;  your  husband  will  look  after  you, 


633  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

and  then  a  little  patience — and  hope  for  the  best.  Now  I  really 
must  be  off.  Good-bye  to  you — good-bye  to  you.' 

And  he  hurried  off,  leaving  them  to  find  their  own  cab. 
When  they  got  in,  Lucy  said,  passionately  : — 

'  I  want  to  go  back,  David.  I  want  Sandy.  I  won't  go  to 
these  lodgings.' 

Then  courage  came  to  him.     He  took  her  hand. 

'  Dear,  dear  wife — for  my  sake — for  Sandy's  1 ' 

She  stared  at  him — at  his  white  face. 

'  Shall  I  die  ?'  she  cried,  with  the  same  passionate  tone. 

'  No,  no,  no  ! '  he  said,  kissing  the  quivering  hand,  and  seeing 
no  one  but  her  in  the  world,  though  they  were  driving  through 
the  crowd  of  Regent  Street.  '  But  we  must  do  everything  Mr. 
Selby  said.  That  hateful  thing  must  be  taken  away — it  is  so  near 
— think  for  yourself  ! — to  the  eye  and  the  brain  ;  and  it  might 
go  downwards  to  the  throat.  You  will  be  brave,  won't  you? 
We  will  look  after  you  so — Dora  and  I.' 

Lucy  sank  back  in  the  cab,  with  a  sudden  collapse  of  nerve 
and  spirit.  David  hung  over  her,  comforting  her,  one  moment 
promising  her  that  in  a  few  days  she  should  have  Sandy  again, 
and  be  quite  well ;  the  next,  checked  and  turned  to  stone  by  the 
memory  of  the  terrible  possibilities  freely  revealed  to  him  in  his 
private  talk  with  Mr.  Selby,  and  by  the  sense  that  he  might  be 
soothing  the  present  only  to  make  the  future  more  awful. 

'  David  !  she  is  in  such  fearful  pain  !  The  nurse  says  she 
must  have  more  morphia.  They  didn't  give  her  enough.  Will 
you  run  to  Mr.  Selby's  house  ?  You  won't  find  him,  of  course — 
he  is  on  his  round — but  his  assistant,  who  was  with  him  here 
just  now,  went  back  there.  Run  for  him  at  once.' 

It  was  Dora  who  spoke,  as  she  closed  the  folding-doors  of  the 
inner  room  where  Lucy  lay.  David,  who  was  crouching  over  the 
fire  in  the  sitting-room,  whither  the  nurse  had  banished  him 
for  a  while,  after  the  operation,  sprang  up,  and  disappeared  in 
an  instant.  Those  faint,  distant  sounds  of  anguish  which  had 
been  in  his  ear  for  half  an  hour  or  more,  ever  since  the  doctors 
had  departed,  declaring  that  everything  was  satisfactorily  over, 
had  been  more  than  his  manhood  could  bear. 

He  returned  in  an  incredibly  short  space  of  time  with  a  young 
surgeon,  who  at  once  administered  another  injection  of  morphia. 

'A  highly  sensitive  patient,'  he  said  to  David,  'and  the 
nerves  have,  no  doubt,  been  badly  cut.  But  she  will  do 
now.' 

And,  indeed,  the  moaning  had  ceased.  She  lay  with  closed 
eyes — so  small  a  creature  in  the  wide  bed — her  head  and  face 
swathed  in  bandages.  But  the  breathing  was  growing  even  and 
soft.  She  was  once  more  unconscious. 

The  doctor  touched  David's  hand  and  went,  after  a  word  with 
the  nurse. 

'  Won't  you  go  into  the  next  room,  sir,  and  have  your  tea  ? 


CHAP,  vin  MATURITY  533 

Mrs.  Grieve  is  sure  to  sleep  now,'  said  the  nurse  to  him  in  her 
compassion. 

He  shook  his  head,  and  sat  down  near  the  foot  of  the  bed. 
The  nurse  went  into  the  dressing-room  a  moment  to  speak  to 
Dora,  who  was  doing  some  unpacking  there,  and  he  was  left 
alone  with  his  wife. 

The  sounds  of  the  street  came  into  the  silent  room,  and  every 
now  and  then  he  had  a  start  of  agony,  thinking  that  she  was 
moving  again — that  she  was  in  pain  again.  But  no,  she  slept ; 
her  breath  came  gently  through  the  childish  parted  lips,  and  the 
dim  light — for  the  nurse  had  drawn  the  curtains  on  the  lengthen- 
ing April  day — hid  her  pallor  and  the  ghastliness  of  the  dressings. 

Forty-eight  hours  ago,  and  they  were  in  the  garden  with 
Sandy  !  And  now  life  seemed  to  have  passed  for  ever  into  this 
half-light  of  misery.  Everything  had  dropped  away  from  him — 
the  interests  of  his  business,  his  books,  his  social  projects.  He 
and  she  were  shut  out  from  the  living  world.  Would  she  ever 
rise  from  that  bed  again — ever  look  at  him  with  the  old  look  ? 

He  sat  on  there,  hour  after  hour,  till  Dora  coaxed  him  into 
the  sitting-room  for  a  while,  and  tried  to  make  him  take  some 
food.  But  he  could  not  touch  it,  and  how  the  sudden  gas  which 
the  servant  lit  glared  on  his  sunken  eyes  !  He  waited  on  his 
companion  mechanically,  then  sat,  with  his  head  on  his  hand, 
listening  for  the  sound  of  the  doctors'  steps. 

When  they  came,  they  hardly  disturbed  their  patient.  She 
moaned  at  being  touched ;  but  everything  was  right,  and  the 
violent  pain  which  had  unexpectedly  followed  the  operation  was 
not  likely  to  recur. 

'  And  what  a  blessing  that  she  took  the  chloroform  so  well, 
with  hardly  any  after-effects  ! '  said  Mr.  Selby  cheerily,  drawing 
on  his  gloves  in  the  sitting-room.  '  Well,  Mr.  Grieve,  you  have 
got  a  good  nurse,  and  can  leave  your  wife  to  her  with  perfect 
peace  of  mind.  You  must  sleep,  or  you  will  knock  up  ;  let  me 
give  you  a  sleeping  draught. ' 

'  Oh  !  I  shall  sleep,'  said  David,  impatiently.  '  You  considered 
the  operation  successful — completely  succcessful  ? ' 

The  surgeon  looked  gravely  into  the  fire. 

'  I  shall  know  more  in  a  week  or  so,'  he  said.  '  I  have  never 
disguised  from  you,  Mr.  Grieve,  how  serious  and  difficult  the  case 
was.  Still,  we  have  done  what  was  right — we  can  but  wait  for 
the  issue.' 

An  hour  later  Dora  looked  into  the  sitting-room,  and  said 
softly : — 

4  She  would  like  to  see  you,  David.' 

He  went  in,  holding  his  breath.  There  was  a  night-light  in 
the  room,  and  her  face  was  lying  in  deep  shadow. 

He  knelt  down  beside  her,  and  kissed  her  hand. 

'  My  darling ! '  he  said — and  his  voice  was  quite  firm  and 
steady — '  are  you  easier  now  ? ' 


534  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  nr 

'  Yes,'  she  said  faintly.     '  Where  are  you  going  to  sleep  ? ' 

'  In  a  room  just  beyond  Dora's  room.  She  could  make  me 
hear  in  a  moment  if  you  wanted  me.' 

Then,  as  he  looked  closer,  he  saw  that  about  her  head  was 
thrown  the  broad  white  lace  scarf  she  had  worn  round  her  neck 
on  the  journey  up.  And  as  he  bent  to  her,  she  suddenly  opened 
her  languid  eyes,  and  gazed  at  him  full.  For  the  moment  it  was 
as  though  she  were  given  back  to  him. 

'  I  made  Dora  put  it  on,'  she  said  feebly,  moving  her  hand 
towards  the  lace.  '  Does  it  hide  all  those  nasty  bandages  ? ' 

'  Yes.    I  can't  see  them  at  all.' 

'  Is  it  pretty  ? ' 

The  little  gleam  of  a  smile  nearly  broke  down  his  self -com 
mand. 

'  Very,'  he  said,  with  a  quivering  lip. 

She  closed  her  eyes  again. 

'  Oh !  I  hope  Lizzie  will  look  after  Sandy,'  she  said  after  a 
while,  with  a  long  sigh. 

Not  a  word  now  of  wilfulness,  of  self-assertion  !  After  the 
sulleuness  and  revolt  of  the  day  before,  which  had  lasted  inter- 
mittently almost  up  to  the  coming  of  the  doctors,  nothing  could 
be  more  speaking,  more  pathetic,  than  this  helpless  acquiescence. 

'  I  mustn't  stay  with  you,'  he  said.  '  You  ought  to  be  going 
to  sleep  again.  Nurse  will  give  you  something  if  you  can't.' 

'  I'm  quite  comfortable,'  she  said,  sleepily.  '  There  isn't  any 
pain.' 

And  she  seemed  to  pass  quickly  and  easily  into  sleep  as  he  sat 
looking  at  her. 

An  hour  or  two  later,  Dora,  who  could  not  sleep  from  the 
effects  of  fatigue  and  emotion,  was  lying  in  her  uncomfortable 
stretcher-bed,  thinking  with  a  sort  of  incredulity  of  all  that  had 
passed  since  David's  telegram  had  reached  her  the  day  before,  or 
puzzling  herself  to  know  how  her  employers  could  possibly  spare 
her  for  another  three  or  four  days'  holiday,  when  she  was  startled 
by  some  recurrent  sounds  from  the  room  beyond  her  own.  David 
was  sleeping  there,  and  Dora,  with  her  woman's  quickness,  had 
at  once  perceived  that  the  partition  between  them  was  very  thin, 
and  had  been  as  still  as  a  mouse  in  going  to  bed. 

The  sound  alarmed  her,  though  she  could  not  make  it  out. 
Instinctively  she  put  her  ear  to  the  wall.  After  a  minute  or  two 
she  hastily  moved  away,  and  hiding  her  head  under  the  bed- 
clothes, fell  to  soft  crying  and  praying. 

For  it  was  the  deep  rending  sound  of  suppressed  weeping, 
the  weeping  of  a  strong  man  who  believes  himself  alone  with  his 
grief  and  with  God.  That  she  should  have  heard  it  at  all  filled 
her  with  a  sort  of  shame. 

Things,  however,  looked  much  brighter  on  the  following 
morning.  The  wound  caused  by  the  operation  was  naturally 
sore  and  stiff,  and  the  dressing  was  painful ;  but  when  the 


CHAP,  vi  MATURITY  535 

doctor's  visit  was  over,  and  Lucy  was  lying  in  the  halo  of  her 
white  scarf  on  her  fresh  pillows,  in  a  room  which  Dora  and  the 
nurse  had  made  daintily  neat  and  straight,  her  own  cheerfulness 
was  astonishing.  She  made  Dora  go  out  and  get  her  some  pat- 
terns for  Sandy's  summer  suits,  and  when  they  came  she  lay 
turning  them  over  from  time  to  time,  or  weakly  twisting  first 
one  and  then  another  round  her  finger.  She  was,  of  course,  per- 
petually anxious  to  know  when  she  would  be  well,  and  whether 
the  scar  would  be  very  bad  ;  but  on  the  whole  she  was  a  docile  and 
promising  patient,  and  she  even  began  to  see  some  gleams  of  virtue 
in  Mr.  Selby,  for  whom  at  first  she  had  taken  the  strongest  dislike. 

Meanwhile,  David,  haunted  always  by  a  horrible  knowledge 
which  was  hid  from  her,  could  get  nothing  decided  for  the  future 
out  of  the  doctors. 

'  We  must  wait,'  said  Mr.  Selby  ;  '  for  the  present  all  is  heal- 
ing well,  but  I  wish  we  could  get  up  her  general  strength.  It 
must  have  been  running  down  badly  of  late.' 

Whereupon  David  was  left  reproaching  himself  for  blindness 
and  neglect,  the  real  truth  being  that,  with  any  one  of  Lucy's 
thin  elastic  frame  and  restless  temperament,  a  good  deal  of 
health-degeneration  may  go  on  without  its  becoming  conspicuous. 

A  few  days  passed.  Dora  was  forced  to  go  back  to  work  ; 
but  as  she  was  to  take  up  her  quarters  at  the  Merton  Koad  house, 
and  to  write  long  accounts  of  Sandy  to  his  mother  every  day, 
Lucy  saw  her  depart  with  considerable  equanimity.  Dora  left 
her  patient  on  the  sofa,  a  white  and  ghostly  figure,  but  already 
talking  eagerly  of  returning  to  Manchester  in  a  week.  When 
she  heard  the  cab  roll  off,  Lucy  lay  back  on  her  cushions  and 
counted  the  minutes  till  David  should  come  in  from  the  British 
Museum,  whither,  because  of  her  improvement,  he  had  gone  to 
clear  up  one  or  two  bibliographical  points.  She  caressed  the 
thought  of  being  left  alone  with  him,  except  for  the  nurse — left 
to  that  tender  and  special  care  he  was  bestowing  on  her  so  richly, 
and  through  which  she  seemed  to  hold  and  know  him  afresh. 

When  he  came  in  she  reproached  him  for  being  late,  and  both 
enjoyed  and  scouted  his  pleas  in  answer. 

4  Well,  I  don't  care,'  she  said  obstinately  ;  '  I  wanted  you.' 

Then  she  heaved  a  long  sigh. 

'  David,  I  made  nurse  let  me  look  at  the  horrid  place  this 
morning.  I  shall  always  be  a  fright — it's  no  good.' 

But  he  knew  her  well  enough  to  perceive  that  she  was  not 
really  very  downcast,  and  that  she  had  already  devised  ways  and 
means  of  hiding  the  mark  as  much  as  possible. 

'  It  doesn't  hurt  or  trouble  you  at  all  ? '  he  asked  her  anxiously. 

'  No,  of  course  not,'  she  said  impatiently.  '  It's  getting  well. 
Do  ask  nurse  to  bring  me  my  tea.' 

The  nurse  brought  it,  and  she  and  David  spoiled  their  invalid 
with  small  attentions. 

'It's  nice  being  waited  on,'  said  Lucy  when  it  was  over, 
settling  herself  to  rest  with  a  little  sigh  of  sensuous  satisfaction. 


536  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Another  week  passed,  and  all  seemed  to  be  doing  well, 
though  Mr.  Selby  would  say  nothing  as  yet  of  allowing  her  to 
move.  Then  came  a  night  when  she  was  restless ;  and  in  the 
morning  the  wound  troubled  her,  and  she  was  extremely  irritable 
and  depressed.  The  moment  the  nurse  gave  him  the  news  at  his 
door  in  the  early  morning,  David's  face  changed.  He  dressed, 
and  went  off  for  Mr.  Selby,  who  came  at  once. 

'  Yes,'  he  said  gravely,  after  his  visit,  as  he  shut  the  folding- 
doors  of  Lucy's  room  behind  him — '  yes,  I  am  sorry  to  say  there 
is  a  return.  Now  the  question  is,  what  to  do.' 

He  came  and  stood  by  the  fireplace,  legs  apart,  head  down, 
debating  with  himself.  David,  haggard  and  unshorn,  watched 
him  helplessly. 

'"We  could  operate  again,'  he  said  thoughtfully,  'but  it  would 
cut  her  about  terribly.  And  I  can't  disguise  from  you,  Mr. 
Grieve' — as  he  raised  his  head  and  caught  sight  of  his  companion 
his  tone  softened  insensibly — '  that,  in  my  opinion,  it  would  be 
all  but  useless.  I  more  than  suspect,  from  my  observation 
to-day,  that  there  are  already  secondary  growths  in  the  lung. 
Probably  they  have  been  there  for  some  time.' 

There  was  a  silence. 

'  Then  we  can  do  nothing,'  said  David. 

'  Nothing  effectual,  alas  1 '  said  the  doctor,  slowly.  '  Pallia- 
tives, of  course,  we  can  use,  of  many  kinds.  But  there  will  not 
be  much  pain.' 

'Will  it  belong?' 

David  was  standing  with  his  back  to  the  doctor,  looking  out 
of  window,  and  Mr.  Selby  only  just  heard  the  words. 

'  I  fear  it  will  be  a  rapid  case,'  he  said  reluctantly.  '  This 
return  is  rapid,  and  there  are  many  indications  this  morning  I 
don't  like.  But  don't  wish  it  prolonged,  my  dear  sir  ! — have 
courage  for  her  and  yourself.' 

The  words  were  not  mere  platitudes — the  soul  of  a  good  man 
looked  from  the  clear  and  masterful  eyes.  He  described  the 
directions  he  had  left  with  the  nurse,  and  promised  to  come 
again  in  the  evening.  Then  he  grasped  David's  hand,  and  would 
have  gone  away  quickly.  But  David,  following  him  mechanically 
to  the  door,  suddenly  recollected  himself. 

'  Could  we  move  her  ? '  he  asked  ;  '  she  may  crave  to  get 
home,  or  to  some  warm  place.' 

'  Yes,  you  can  move  her,'  the  doctor  said,  decidedly.  '  With 
an  invalid-carriage  and  a  nurse  you  can  do  it.  We  will  talk 
about  it  when  I  come  again  to-night.' 

'A  ghastly  case,'  he  was  saying  to  himself  as  he  went  down- 
stairs, '  and,  thank  heaven  !  a  rare  one.  Strange  and  mysterious 
thing  it  is,  with  its  ghoulish  preference  for  the  young.  Poor 
thing !  poor  thing !  and  yesterday  she  was  so  cheerful — she 
would  tell  me  all  about  her  boy.' 


CHAP,  ix  MATURITY  537 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  history  of  the  weeks  that  followed  shall  be  partly  told  in 
David's  own  words,  gathered  from  those  odds-and-etids  of  paper, 
old  envelopes,  the  half -sheets  of  letters,  on  which  he  would  write 
sometimes  in  those  hours  when  he  was  necessarily  apart  from 
Lucy,  thrusting  them  on  his  return  between  the  leaves  of  his 
locked  journal,  clinging  to  them  as  the  only  possible  record  of 
his  wife's  ebbing  life,  yet  passionately  avoiding  the  sight  of  them 
when  they  were  once  written. 

'  RYDAL,  AMBLESIDE  :  May  5th. — We  arrived  this  afternoon. 
The  day  has  been  glorious.  The  mountains  round  the  head  of 
the  lake,  as  we  drove  along  it  at  a  foot's  pace  that  the  carriage 
might  not  shake  her,  stood  out  in  the  sun  ;  the  light  wind  drove 
the  cloud-shadows  across  their  blues  and  purples  ;  the  water  was 
a  sheet  of  light ;  the  larches  were  all  out,  though  other  trees  are 
late  ;  and  every  breath  was  perfume. 

'  But  she  was  too  weary  to  look  at  it ;  and  before  we  had 
gone  two  miles,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  think  of  nothing  but 
the  hateful  length  of  the  drive,  and  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  road. 

'When  we  arrived,  she  would  walk  into  the  cottage,  and 
before  nurse  or  I  realised  what  she  was  doing,  she  went  straight 
through  the  little  passage  which  runs  from  front  to  back,  out 
into  the  garden.  She  stood  a  moment — in  her  shawls,  with  the 
little  white  hood  she  has  devised  for  herself  drawn  close  round 
her  head  and  face — looking  at  the  river  with  its  rocks  and  foam- 
ing water,  at  the  shoulder  of  Nab  Scar  above  the  trees,  at  the 
stone  house  with  the  red  blinds  opposite. 

'  "It  looks  just  the  same,"  she  said,  and  the  tears  rolled 
down  her  cheeks. 

'  We  brought  her  in — nurse  and  I — and  when  she  had  been 
put  comfortably  on  the  low  couch  I  had  sent  from  London  be- 
forehand, and  had  taken  some  food,  she  was  a  little  cheered. 
She  made  us  draw  her  to  the  window  of  the  little  back  sitting- 
room,  and  she  lay  looking  out  till  it  was  almost  dark.  But  as  I 
foresaw,  the  pain  of  coming  is  more  than  equal  to  any  pleasure 
there  may  be. 

'  Yet  she  would  come.  During  those  last  days  in  London, 
when  she  would  hardly  speak  to  us,  when  she  lay  in  the  dark  in 
that  awful  room  all  day,  and  every  attempt  to  feed  her  or  com- 
fort her  made  her  angry,  I  could  not,  for  a  long  time,  get  her  to 
say  what  she  wished  about  moving,  except  that  she  would  not 
go  back  to  Manchester. 

'  Her  hand-glass  could  not  be  kept  from  her,  and  one  morning 
she  cried  bitterly  when  she  saw  that  she  could  no  longer  so 
arrange  her  laces  as  to  completely  hide  the  disfigurement  of  the 
right  side  of  the  face. 

'  "  No !  I  will  never  go  back  to  Merton  Road  !"  she  cried, 
throwing  down  the  glass  ;  "  no  one  shall  see  me  !  " 


538  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  But  at  night,  after  I  hoped  she  was  asleep,  she  sent  nurse 
to  say  that  she  wanted  to  go  to — Rydcd  ! — to  the  same  cottage  by 
the  Botha  we  had  stayed  at  on  our  honeymoon.  Nurse  said  she 
could — she  could  have  an  invalid-carriage  from  door  to  door. 
Would  I  write  for  the  rooms  at  once  ?  And  Sandy  could  join  us 
there. 

'  So,  after  nine  years,  we  are  here  again.  The  house  is 
empty.  We  have  our  old  rooms.  Nothing  is  changed  in  the 
valley.  After  she  was  asleep,  I  went  out  along  the  river,  keep- 
ing to  a  tiny  path  on  the  steep  right  bank  till  I  reached  a  wooden 
bridge,  and  then  through  a  green  bit,  fragrant  with  fast-spring- 
ing grass  and  flowers,  to  that  point  beside  the  lake  I  remember 
so  well.  I  left  her  there  one  day,  sitting,  and  dabbling  in  the 
water,  while  I  ran  up  Loughrigg.  She  was  nineteen.  How  she 
tripped  over  the  hills  ! 

'  To-night  there  was  a  faint  moon.  The  air  was  cold,  but 
quite  still,  and  the  reflections,  both  of  the  islands  and  of  Nab 
Scar,  seemed  to  sink  into  unfathomed  depths  of  shadowy  water. 
Loughrigg  rose  boldly  to  my  left  against  the  night  sky  ;  I  could 
see  the  rifle-butts  and  the  soft  blackness  of  the  great  larch- 
plantation  on  the  side  of  Silver  How. 

'  There,  to  my  right,  was  the  tower  of  the  little  church, 
whitish  against  the  woods,  and  close  beside  it,  amid  the  trees,  1 
felt  the  presence  of  Wordsworth's  house,  though  I  could  not  see 
it. 

'  O  poet !  who  wrote  for  me,  not  knowing — oh,  heavenly 
valley  ! — you  have  but  one  voice  ;  it  haunts  my  ears : — 

'  Thy  mornings  showed,  thy  nights  concealed, 

The  bowers  where  Lucy  played  ; 
And  thine,  too,  is  the  last  green  field 
That  Lucy's  eyes  surveyed.' 

4  May  Wth. — She  never  speaks  of  dying,  and  I  dare  not  speak 
of  it.  But  sometimes  she  is  like  a  soul  wandering  in  terror 
through  a  place  of  phantoms.  Her  eyes  grow  large  and  strained, 
she  pushes  me  away  from  her.  And  she  often  wakes  at  night, 
sinking  in  black  gulfs  of  fear,  from  which  I  cannot  save  her. 

'  Oh,  my  God  !  my  heart  is  torn,  my  life  is  sickened  with 
pity !  Give  me  some  power  to  comfort — take  from  me  this 
impotence,  this  numbness.  She,  so  little  practised  in  suffering, 
so  much  of  a  child  still,  called  to  bear  this  monstrous  thing. 
Savage,  incredible  Nature  !  But  behind  Nature  there  is  God — 

'  To-night  she  asked  me  to  pray  with  her — asked  it  with  re- 
proach. "You  never  say  good  things  to  me  now!"  And  I 
could  not  explain  myself. 

'  It  was  in  this  way.  When  Dora  was  with  her,  she  used  to 
read  and  pray  with  her.  I  would  not  have  interfered  for  the 
world.  When  Dora  left,  I  thought  she  would  use  the  little 
manual  of  prayers  for  the  sick  that  Dora  had  left  behind  ;  the 
nurse,  who  is  a  religious  woman,  and  reads  to  her  a  good  deal, 


CHAP,  ix  MATURITY  539 

would  have  read  this  whenever  she  wished.  One  night  I  offered 
to  read  it  to  her  myself,  but  she  would  not  let  me.  And  for  the 
rest — in  spite  of  our  last  talk — I  was  so  afraid  of  jarring  her, 
of  weakening  any  thought  that  might  have  sustained  her. 

'  But  to-night  she  asked  me,  and  for  the  first  time  since  our 
earliest  married  life  I  took  her  hand  and  prayed.  Afterwards 
she  lay  still,  till  suddenly  her  lip  began  to  quiver. 

'  "  I  wasn't  ever  so  very  bad.  I  did  love  you  and  Sandy,  and 
I  did  help  that  girl, — you  know — that  Dora  knew,  who  went 
wrong.  And  I  am  so  ill — so  ill  1 "  ' 

{ May  20th. — A  fortnight  has  passed.  Sandy  and  his  nurse 
are  lodging  at  a  house  on  the  hill ;  every  morning  he  comes  down 
here,  and  I  take  him  for  a  walk.  He  was  very  puzzled  and 
grave  at  first  when  he  saw  her,  but  now  he  has  grown  used  to 
her  look,  and  he  plays  merrily  about  among  the  moss-grown 
rocks  beside  the  river,  while  she  lies  in  the  slung  couch,  to  which 
nurse  and  I  carry  her  on  a  little  stretcher,  watching  him. 

'  There  was  a  bright  hour  this  morning.  We  are  in  the  midst 
of  a  spell  of  dry  and  beautiful  weather,  such  as  often  visits  this 
rainy  country  in  the  early  summer,  before  any  visitors  come. 
The  rhododendrons  and  azaleas  are  coming  out  in  the  gardens 
under  Loughrigg — some  little  copses  here  and  there  are  sheets  of 
blue — and  the  green  is  rushing  over  the  valley.  "We  had  put  her 
among  the  rocks  under  a  sycamore-tree — a  singularly  beautiful 
tree,  with  two  straight  stems  dividing  its  rounded  masses  of 
young  leaf.  There  were  two  wagtails  perching  on  the  stones  in 
the  river,  and  swinging  their  long  tails  ;  and  the  light  flickered 
through  the  trees  on  to  the  water  foaming  round  the  stones  or 
slipping  in  brown  cool  sheets  between  them.  There  was  a 
hawthorn-tree  in  bloom  near  by ;  in  the  garden  of  the  house 
opposite  a  woman  was  hanging  out  some  clothes  to  dry ;  the 
Grasmere  coach  passed  with  a  clatter,  and  Sandy  with  the  two 
children  from  the  lodgings  ran  out  to  the  bridge  to  look  at  it. 

'  Yes,  she  had  a  moment  of  enjoyment !  I  bind  the  thought 
of  it  to  my  heart.  Lizzie  was  sitting  sewing  near  the  edge  of  the 
river,  that  she  might  look  after  Sandy.  He  was  told  not  to 
climb  on  to  the  stones  in  the  current  of  the  stream,  but  as  he 
was  bent  on  catching  the  vain,  provoking  wagtails  who  strutted 
about  on  them,  the  prohibition  was  unendurable.  As  soon  as 
Lizzie's  head  was  bent  over  her  work,  he  would  clamber  in  and 
out  till  he  reached  some  quite  forbidden  rock  ;  and  then,  looking 
back  with  dancing  eyes  and  the  tip  of  his  little  tongue  showing 
between  his  white  teeth,  he  would  say,  "  Go  on  with  your  work, 
Nana,  darling  !  " — And  his  mother's  look  never  left  him  all  the 
time. 

'  Once  he  had  been  digging  with  his  little  spade  among  the 
fine  grey  gravel  silted  up  here  and  there  among  the  hollows  of 
the  rocks.  He  had  been  digging  with  great  energy,  and  for  May 
the  air  was  hot.  Lizzie  looked  up  and  said  to  him,  "  Sandy,  it's 


540  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IT 

time  for  me  to  take  you  to  bed  " — that  is,  for  his  midday  sleep. 
"  Yes,"  he  said,  with  a  languid  air,  sitting  down  on  a  stone  with 
his  spade  between  his  knees — "yes,  I  think  I'd  better  come  to 
bed.  My  heart  is  very  dreary."  "  What  do  you  mean  ? "  "  My 
heart  is  very  dreary — dreary  means  tired,  you  know."  "Oh, 
indeed  ! — where  is  your  heart?"  "Here,"  he  said,  laying  his 
hand  lackadaisically  on  the  small  of  his  back. 

4  And  then  she  smiled,  for  the  first  time  for  so  many,  many 
days !  I  came  to  sit  by  her  ;  she  left  her  hand  in  mine ;  and 
after  the  child  was  gone  the  morning  slipped  by  peacefully,  with 
only  the  sound  of  the  river  and  the  wheels  of  a  few  passing  carts 
to  break  the  silence. 

'  In  the  afternoon  she  asked  me  if  I  should  not  have  to  go  back 
to  Manchester.  How  could  all  those  men  and  those  big  printing- 
rooms  get  on  without  me  ?  I  told  her  that  John  reported  to  me 
every  other  day  ;  that  a  batch  of  our  best  men  had  sent  word  to 
me,  through  him,  that  everything  was  going  well,  and  I  was  not 
to  worry ;  that  there  had  been  a  strike  of  some  importance 
among  the  Manchester  compositors,  but  that  our  men  had  not 
joined. 

'  She  listened  to  it  all,  and  then  she  shut  her  eyes  and  said  : — 

'  "  I'm  glad  you  did  that  about  the  men.  I  don't  understand 
quite — but  I'm  glad." 

' .  .  .  You  can  see  nothing  of  her  face  now  in  its  white 
draperies  but  the  small,  pointed  chin  and  nose ;  and  then  the 
eyes,  with  their  circles  of  pain,  the  high  centre  of  the  brow,  and 
a  wave  or  two  of  her  pretty  hair  tangled  in  the  lace  edge  of  the 
hood. 

'  "  My  darling, — my  darling  !    God  have  mercy  upon  us  !  " ' 

'  June  2nd. — "For  the  hardness  of  your  hearts  he  wrote  you 
this  commandment.'1'1  How  profoundly  must  he  who  spoke  the 
things  reported  in  this  passage  have  conceived  of  marriage  ! 
For  the  hardness  of  your  hearts.  Himself  governed  wholly  by 
the  inward  voice,  unmoved  by  the  mere  external  authority  of  the 
great  Mosaic  name,  he  handles  the  law  presented  to  him  with  a 
sort  of  sad  irony.  The  words  imply  the  presence  in  him  of  a 
slowly  formed  and  passionately  held  ideal.  Neither  sin,  nor 
suffering,  nor  death  can  nor  ought  to  destroy  the  marriage  bond, 
once  created.  It  is  not  there  for  our  pleasure,  nor  for  its  mere 
natural  object, — but  to  form  the  soul. 

'  The  world  has  marched  since  that  day,  in  law — still  more, 
as  it  supposes,  in  sentiment.  But  are  we  yet  able  to  bear  such  a 
saying  ? 

' .  .  .  Then  compare  with  these  words  the  magnificent  out- 
burst in  which,  a  little  earlier,  he  sweeps  from  his  path  his 
mother  and  his  brethren.  There  are  plentiful  signs — take  the 
"corban"  passage,  for  instance,  still  more,  the  details  of  the 
Prodigal  Son — of  the  same  deep  and  tender  thinking  as  we  find 
in  the  most  authentic  sayings  about  marriage  applied  to  the 


CHAP.  IX  MATURITY  541 

parental  and  brotherly  relation.  But  he  himself,  realising,  as  it 
would  seem,  with  peculiar  poignancy,  the  sacredness  of  marriage 
and  the  claim  of  the  family,  is  yet  alone,  and  must  be  alone  to 
the  end.  The  fabric  of  the  Kingdom  rises  before  him  ;  his  soul 
burns  in  the  fire  of  his  message  ;  and  the  lost  sheep  call. 

'  She  has  been  fairly  at  ease  this  afternoon,  and  I  have  been 
lying  on  the  grass  by  the  lake,  pondering  these  things.  The 
narrative  of  Mark,  full  as  it  is  already  of  legendary  accretion, 
brings  one  so  close  to  him  ;  the  living  breath  and  tone  are  in 
one's  ears.' 

'June  4th. — These  last  two  days  she  is  much  worse.  The 
local  trouble  is  stationary  ;  but  there  must  be  developments  we 
know  nothing  of  elsewhere.  For  she  perishes  every  day  before 
our  eyes — we  cannot  give  her  sleep — there  is  such  malaise, 
emaciation,  weariness. 

'  She  is  wonderfully  patient.  It  seems  to  me,  looking  back, 
that  a  few  days  ago  came  a  change.  I  cannot  remember  any 
words  that  marked  it,  but  it  is  as  though — without  our  knowing  it 
— her  eyes  had  turned  themselves  irrevocably  from  us  and  from 
life,  to  the  hills  of  death.  Yet — strange  ! — she  takes  more 
notice  of  those  about  her.  Yesterday  she  showed  an  interest 
just  like  her  old  self  in  the  children's  going  to  a  little  fete  at 
Ambleside.  She  would  have  them  all  in — Sandy  and  the  land- 
lady's two  little  girls — to  look  at  them  when  they  were  dressed. 
— What  strikes  me  with  awe  is  that  she  has  no  more  tears,  though 
she  says  every  now  and  then  the  most  touching  things — things 
that  pierce  to  the  very  marrow. 

'  She  told  me  to-day  that  she  wished  to  see  her  father.  1  have 
written  to  him  this  evening.' 

'  June  6th. — Purcell  has  been  here  a  few  hours,  and  has  gone 
back  to-night.  She  received  him  with  perfect  calmness,  though 
they  have  not  spoken  to  each  other  for  ten  years.  He  came  in 
with  his  erect,  military  port  and  heavy  tread,  looking  little  older, 
though  his  hair  is  gray.  But  he  blenched  at  sight  of  her. 

'  "  You  must  kiss  me  on  the  forehead,"  she  said  to  him  feebly, 
"but,  please,  very  gently." 

'So  he  kissed  her,  and  sat  down.  He  cleared  his  throat 
often,  and  did  not  know  what  to  say.  But  she  asked  him,  by 
degrees,  about  some  of  her  mother's  relations  whom  she  had  not 
seen  for  long,  then  about  himself  and  his  health.  The  ice 
thawed,  but  the  talk  was  difficult.  Towards  the  end  he  inquired 
of  her — and,  I  think,  with  genuine  feeling — whether  she  had 
"sought  salvation."  She  said  faintly,  "No;  "and  he,  looking 
shocked  and  shaken,  bade  her,  with  very  much  of  his  old  voice 
and  manner,  and  all  the  old  phraseology,  ' '  lay  hold  of  the  merits 
of  Jesus." 

'Towards  the  end  of  his  exhortations  she  interrupted  him. 

'"You  must  see  Sandy,   and  you  must  kiss  me  again.     I 


542  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

wasn't  a  good  daughter.  But,  oh  !  why  wouldn't  you  make 
friends  with  me  and  David  ?  I  tried — you  remember  I  tried  ? " 

'  "  I  am  ready  to  forgive  all  the  past,"  he  said,  drawing  him- 
self up ;  "I  can  say  no  more." 

4  "  Well,  kiss  me  !  "  she  said,  in  a  melancholy  whisper.  And 
he  kissed  her  again. 

'  Then  I  would  not  let  him  exhaust  her  any  more,  or  take  any 
set  farewell.  I  hurried  him  away  as  though  for  tea,  and  nurse 
and  I  pronounced  against  his  seeing  her  again. 

'  On  our  walk  to  the  coach  he  broke  out  once  more,  and  im- 
plored me,  with  much  unction  and  some  dignity,  not  to  let  my 
infidel  opinions  stand  in  the  way,  but  to  summon  some  godly 
man  to  see  and  talk  with  her.  I  said  that  a  neighbouring  clergy- 
man had  been  several  times  to  see  her,  since,  as  he  probably 
knew,  she  had  been  a  Churchwoman  for  years.  In  my  inward 
frenzy  I  seemed  to  be  hurling  all  sorts  of  wild  sayings  at  his 
head  ;  but  I  don't  believe  they  came  to  speech,  for  I  know  at  the 
end  we  parted  with  the  civility  of  strangers.  I  promised  to  send 
him  news.  What  amazed  me  was  his  endless  curiosity  about  the 
details  of  her  illness.  He  would  have  the  whole  history  of  the 
operation,  and  all  the  medical  opinion  she  could  remember  from 
the  nurse.  And  on  our  walk  he  renewed  the  subject ;  but  I  could 
bear  it  no  more. 

'  Oh,  my  God  !  what  does  it  matter  to  me  why  she  is  dying  ? ' 

4  Then,  when  I  got  home,  I  found  her  rather  excited,  and  she 
whispered  to  me  :  "  He  asked  me  if  I  had  sought  salvation,  and 
I  said  No.  I  didn't  seek  it,  David  ;  but  it  comes — when  you  are 
here."  Then  her  chest  heaved,  but  with  that  strange  instinct  of 
self-preservation  she  would  not  say  a  word  more,  nor  would  she 
let  me  weep.  She  asked  me  to  hold  her  hands  in  mine,  and  so 
she  slept  a  little. 

'  Dora  writes  that  in  a  fortnight  more  she  can  get  a  holiday 
of  a  week  or  two.  Will  she  be  in  time  ? 

'  It  is  two  months  to-day  since  we  went  to  London.' 

On  one  of  the  last  days  in  June  Dora  arrived.  It  seemed  to 
her  that  Lucy  could  have  but  a  few  days  to  live.  Working  both 
outwardly  and  inwardly,  the  terrible  disease  had  all  but  done  its 
work.  She  had  nearly  lost  the  power  of  swallowing,  and  lived 
mainly  on  the  morphia  injections  which  were  regularly  adminis- 
tered to  her.  But  at  intervals  she  spoke  a  good  deal,  and  quite 
clearly. 

And  Dora  had  not  been  six  hours  with  her  before  a  curious 
thing  happened.  The  relation  which,  ever  since  their  meeting  as 
girls,  had  prevailed  between  her  and  Lucy,  seemed  to  be  suddenly 
reversed.  She  was  no  longer  the  teacher  and  sustainer  ;  in  the 
little  dying  creature  there  was  now  a  remote  and  heavenly  power  ; 
it  could  not  be  described,  but  Dora  yielded  with  tears  to  the  awe 
and  sovereignty  of  it. 

She  saw  with  some  plainness,  however,  that  it  depended  on 


CHAP,  ix  MATURITY  543 

the  relation  between  the  husband  and  wife.  Since  she  had  been 
with  them  last,  it  had  been  touched — this  relation — by  a  Divine 
alchemy.  The  self  in  both  seemed  to  have  dropped  away.  The 
two  lives  were  no  longer  two,  but  one — he  cherishing,  she  leaning. 

The  night  she  came  she  pressed  Lucy  to  take  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. Lucy  assented,  and  the  Communion  was  administered, 
with  David  kneeling  beside  her  pillow.  But  afterwards  Lucy 
was  troubled,  and  when  Dora  proposed  at  night  to  read  and  pray 
with  her,  she  said  faintly,  'No;  David  does."  And  thence- 
forward, though  she  was  all  gentleness,  Dora  did  not  find  it  very 
easy  to  get  religious  speech  with  her,  and  went  often — poor 
Dora  ! — sadly,  and  in  fear. 

Dora  had  been  in  the  house  five  days,  when  new  trouble  fol- 
lowed on  the  old.  David  one  morning  received  a  letter  from 
Louie,  forwarded  from  Manchester,  and  when  Dora  followed  him 
into  the  garden  with  a  message,  she  found  him  walking  about 
distracted. 

'  Read  it ! '  he  said. 

The  letter  was  but  a  few  scrawled  lines  : — 

'  Ce"cile  has  got  diphtheria.  Our  doctor  says  so,  but  he  is  a 
devil.  I  must  have  another — the  best — and  there  is  no  money. 
If  she  dies,  you  will  never  see  me  again,  I  swear.  I  dare  say 
you  will  think  it  a  good  job,  but  now  you  know.' 

The  writing  was  hardly  legible,  and  the  paper  had  been 
twisted  and  crumpled  by  the  haste  of  the  writer. 

'  What  is  to  be  done  ? '  said  David,  in  pale  despair.  '  Can  I 
leave  this  house  one  hour — one  minute  ? ' 

Then  a  sudden  thought  struck  him.  He  looked  at  Dora  with 
a  flash  of  appeal. 

'  Dora,  you  have  been  our  friend  always,  and  you  have  been 
good  to  Louie.  Will  you  go  ?  I  need  not  say  all  shall  be  made 
easy.  I  could  get  John  to  take  you  over.  He  has  been  several 
times  to  Paris  for  me  this  last  five  years,  and  would  be  a  help.' 

That  was  indeed  a  struggle  for  Dora !  Her  heart  clung  to 
these  people  she  loved,  and  the  devote  in  her  yearned  for  those 
last  opportunities  with  the  dying,  on  the  hope  of  which  she  still 
fed  herself.  To  go  from  this  deathbed,  to  that  fierce  mother,  in 
those  horrible  surroundings  ! 

But  just  as  she  had  taught  Louie  in  the  old  days  because  David 
Grieve  asked  her,  so  now  she  went,  in  the  end,  because  he  asked  her. 

She  was  to  be  away  six  days  at  least.  But  the  doctor  thought 
it  possible  she  might  return  to  find  Lucy  alive.  David  made 
every  possible  arrangement — telegraphed  to  Louie  that  she  was 
coming  ;  and  to  John  directing  him  to  meet  her  at  Warrington 
and  take  her  on  ;  wrote  out  the  times  of  her  journey  ;  the  address 
of  a  pension  in  the  Avenue  Friedland,  kept  by  an  English  lady, 
to  which  he  happened  to  be  able  to  direct  her  ;  and  the  name  of 
the  English  lawyer  in  Paris  who  had  advised  him  at  the  time  of 
Louie's  marriage,  had  done  various  things  for  him  since,  and 
would,  he  knew,  be  a  friend  in  need. 


644  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

Twelve  hours  after  the  arrival  of  Louie's  letter,  Dora  tore 
herself  from  Lucy.  '  Don't  say  good-bye,'  said  David,  his  face 
working,  and  to  spare  him  and  Lucy  she  went  as  though  she  were 
just  going  across  the  road  for  the  night.  David  saw  her — a  white 
and  silent  traveller — into  the  car  that  was  to  take  her  on  the  first 
stage  of  a  journey  which,  apart  from  everything  else,  alarmed 
her  provincial  imagination.  David's  gratitude  threw  her  into  a 
mist  of  tears  as  she  drove  off.  Surely,  of  all  the  self-devoted  acts 
of  Dora's  life,  this  mission  and  this  leave-taking  were  not  the 
least ! 

Lucy  heard  the  wheels  roll  away.  A  stony,  momentary  sense 
of  desolation  came  over  her  as  this  one  more  strand  was  cut. 
But  David  came  in,  and  the  locked  lips  relaxed.  It  had  been 
necessary  to  tell  her  the  reason  of  Dora's  departure.  And  in  the 
course  of  the  long  June  evening  David  gathered  from  the  motion 
of  her  face  that  she  wished  to  speak  to  him.  He  bent  down  to 
her,  and  she  murmured  : — 

'  Tell  Louie  I  wished  I'd  been  kinder — I  pray  God  will  let  her 
keep  Cecile.  .  .  .  She  must  come  to  Manchester  again  when  I'm 
gone.' 

The  night-watch  was  divided  between  David  and  the  nurse. 
At  five  o'clock  in  the  summer  morning — brilliant  once  more  after 
storm  and  rain — he  injected  morphia  into  the  poor  wasted  arm, 
and  she  took  a  few  drops  of  brandy.  Then,  after  a  while,  she 
seemed  to  sleep  ;  and  he,  stretched  on  a  sofa  beside  her,  and  con- 
fident of  waking  at  the  slightest  sound,  fell  into  a  light  doze. 

Lucy  woke  when  the  sun  was  high,  rather  more  than  an  hour 
later.  Her  eyes  were  teased  by  a  chink  in  the  curtain  ;  she 
hardly  knew  what  it  was,  but  her  dying  sense  shrank,  and  she 
vaguely  thought  of  calling  David.  But  as  she  lay,  propped  up, 
she  looked  down  on  him,  and  she  saw  his  pale,  sunken  face,  with 
the  momentary  softening  of  rest  upon  it.  And  there  wandered 
through  her  mind  fragments  of  his  sayings  to  her  in  that  last 
evening  of  theirs  together  in  the  Manchester  house, — especially, 
'  It  can  only  be  proved  by  living — by  every  victory  over  the  evil 
self.11  In  its  mortal  fatigue  her  memory  soon  lost  hold  of  words 
and  ideas  ;  but  she  had  the  strength  not  to  wake  him. 

Then  as  she  lay  in  what  seemed  to  her  this  scorching  light — 
in  reality  it  was  one  little  ray  which  had  evaded  the  thick  cur- 
tains— a  flood  of  joy  seemed  to  pour  into  her  soul.  '  I  shall  not 
live  beyond  to-day, 'she  thought,  'but  I  know  now  I  shall  see 
him  again.' 

When  at  last  she  made  a  faint  movement,  and  he  woke  at 
once,  he  saw  that  the  end  was  very  near.  He  thought  of  Dora 
in  Paris  with  a  pang,  but  there  was  no  help  for  it.  Through  that 
day  he  never  stirred  from  her  side  in  the  darkened  room,  and  she 
sank  fast.  She  spoke  only  one  connected  sentence — to  say  with 
great  difficulty,  '  Dying  is  long — but — not — painful. '  The  words 
woke  in  him  a  strange  echo  ;  they  had  been  among  the  last  words 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  545 

of  'Lias,  his  childhood's  friend.  But  she  breathed  one  or  two 
names — the  landlady  of  the  lodging-house,  and  the  servants, 
especially  the  nurse. 

They  came  in  on  tiptoe  and  kissed  her.  She  had  already 
thanked  each  one. 

Sandy  was  just  going  to  bed,  when  David  carried  him  in  to 
her.  One  of  her  last  conscious  looks  was  for  him.  He  was  in 
his  nightgown,  with  bare  feet,  holding  his  father  tight  round  the 
neck,  and  whimpering.  They  bent  down  to  her,  and  he  kissed 
her  on  the  cheek,  as  David  told  him,  'very  softly.'  Then  he 
cried  to  go  away  from  this  still,  grey  mother.  David  gave  him 
to  the  nurse  and  came  back. 

The  day  passed,  and  the  night  began.  The  doctor  in  his 
evening  visit  said  it  would  be  a  marvel  if  she  saw  the  morrow. 
David  sat  beside  the  bed,  his  head  bowed  on  the  hand  he  held  ; 
the  nurse  was  in  the  farther  corner.  His  whole  life  and  hers 
passed  before  him ;  and  in  his  mind  there  hovered  perpetually 
the  image  of  the  potter  and  the  wheel.  He  and  she — the  Hand 
so  unfaltering,  so  divine  had  bound  them  there,  through  resist- 
ance and  anguish  unspeakable.  And  now,  for  him  there  was 
only  a  sense  of  absolute  surrender  and  submission,  which  in  this 
hour  of  agony  and  exaltation  rose  steadily  into  the  ecstasy — ay, 
the  vision  of  faith  !  In  the  pitying  love  which  had  absorbed  his 
being  he  had  known  that  '  best'  at  last  whereat  his  craving  youth 
had  grasped  ;  and  losing  himself  wholly  had  found  his  God. 

And  for  her,  had  not  her  weak  life  become  one  flame  of  love 
— a  cup  of  the  Holy  Grail,  beating  and  pulsing  with  the  Divine 
Life? 

The  dawn  came.  She  pulled  restlessly  at  her  white  wrapper 
— seemed  to  be  in  pain — whispered  something  of  'a  weight.' 
Then  the  last  change  came  over  her.  She  opened  her  eyes — but 
they  saw  no  longer.  Nature  ceased  to  resist,  and  the  soul  had 
long  since  yielded  itself.  With  a  meekness  and  piteousness  of 
look  not  to  be  told,  never  to  be  forgotten,  Lucy  Grieve  passed 
away. 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  very  day  after  Lucy  had  been  carried  to  her  last  rest  in  that 
most  poetic  of  all  graveyards  which  bends  its  grassy  shape  to  the 
encircling  Kotha  and  holds  in  trust  the  ashes  of  Wordsworth, 
David  Grieve  started  for  Paris. 

He  had  that  morning  received  a  telegram  from  Dora  :  '  Louie 
disappeared.  Have  no  clue.  Can  you  come  ? '  Two  days  before, 
the  news  of  Cecile's  death  from  diphtheria  had  reached  him 
in  a  letter  from  poor  Dora,  rendered  almost  inarticulate  by  her 
grief  for  Lucy  and  bitter  regret  for  her  own  absence  from  her 
cousin's  deathbed,  mingling  with  her  pity  for  Louie's  unfortunate 
child  and  her  dread  and  panic  with  regard  to  Louie  herself. 

But  so  long  as  that  white  form  lay  shrouded  in  the  cottage 
upper  room,  he  could  not  move — and  he  could  scarcely  feel. 


546  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  TV 

The  telegram  broke  in  upon  a  sort  of  lethargy  which  had  held 
him  ever  since  Lucy's  last  breath.  He  started  at  once.  On  the 
way  he  spent  two  hours  at  Manchester.  On  the  table  in  his  study 
there  still  lay  the  medical  book  he  had  taken  down  from  his 
scientific  shelf  on  the  night  of  Dr.  Mildmay's  visit ;  in  Lucy's 
room  her  dresses  hung  as  she  had  left  them  on  the  doors  ;  a  red 
woollen  cap  she  had  been  knitting  for  Sandy  was  thrown  down 
half  finished  on  the  dressing-table.  Of  the  hour  he  spent  in  that 
room,  putting  away  some  of  the  little  personal  possessions,  still 
warm  as  it  were  from  her  touch,  let  no  more  be  said. 

When  he  reached  Paris  he  inquired  for  Dora  at  the  pension  in 
the  Avenue  Friedland,  to  which  he  had  sent  her.  John,  who  had 
also  written  to  him,  and  was  still  in  Paris,  was  staying,  he  knew, 
at  an  hotel  on  the  Quai  Voltaire.  But  he  went  to  Dora  first. 

Dora,  however,  was  not  at  home.  She  had  left  for  him  the 
full  address  of  the  house  in  the  Paris  banlieue  where  she  had 
found  Louie,  and  full  directions  as  to  how  to  reach  it.  He  took 
one  of  the  open  cabs  and  drove  thither  in  the  blazing  July  sun. 

An  interminable  drive ! — the  whole  length  of  the  Avenue  de 
la  Grande- Armee  and  the  Avenue  de  Neuilly,  past  the  Seine  and 
the  Bond  Pont  de  Courbevoie,  until  at  last  turning  to  the  left  into 
the  wide  and  villainously  paved  road  that  leads  to  Kueil,  Bougi- 
val,  and  St.  Germain,  the  driver  and  David  between  them  with 
difficulty  discovered  a  side  street  which  answered  to  the  name 
Dora  had  several  times  given. 

They  had  reached  one  of  the  most  squalid  parts  of  the  western 
banlieue.  Houses  half  built  and  deserted  in  the  middle,  perhaps 
by  some  bankrupt  builder  ;  small  traders,  bakers,  charcutiers, 
fried-fish  sellers,  lodged  in  structures  of  lath  and  plaster,  just  run 
up  and  already  crumbling  ;  cabarets  of  the  roughest  and  meanest 
kind,  adorned  with  high-sounding  devices, — David  mechanically 
noticed  one  which  had  blazoned  on  its  stained  and  peeling  front, 
A  la  renaissance  du  Phenix  ; — heaps  of  rubbish  and  garbage 
with  sickly  children  playing  among  them  ;  here  and  there  some 
small,  ill-smelling  factory  ;  a  few  melancholy  shrubs  in  new-made 
gardens,  drooping  and  festering  under  a  cruel  sun  in  a  scorched 
and  unclean  soil : — the  place  repelled  and  outraged  every  sense. 
Was  it  here  that  little  Cecile  had  passed  from  a  life  of  pain  to  a 
death  of  torture  ? 

He  rang  at  a  sinister  and  all  but  windowless  house,  which  h* 
was  able  to  identify  from  Dora's  directions.  John  opened  to  him, 
and  in  a  little  room  to  the  right,  which  looked  on  to  a  rank  bit  of 
neglected  garden,  he  found  Dora.  A  woman,  with  a  scowling 
brow  and  greedy  mouth,  disappeared  into  the  back  premises  as  he 
entered. 

Dora  and  he  clasped  hands.  Then  the  sight  of  his  face  broke 
down  even  her  long-practised  self-control,  and  she  laid  her  head 
down  on  the  table  and  sobbed.  But  he  showed  little  emotion ; 
while  John,  standing  shyly  on  the  other  side  of  the  room,  and  the 
weeping  Dora  could  hardly  find  words  to  tell  their  own  story,  so 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  547 

overwhelmed  were  they  by  those  indelible  signs  upon  him  of  all 
that  he  had  gone  through. 

He  asked  them  rapidly  a  number  of  questions. 

In  the  first  place  Dora  explained  that  she  and  John  were 
engaged  in  putting  together  whatever  poor  possessions  the  house 
contained  of  a  personal  kind,  that  they  might  not  either  be  seized 
for  debt,  or  fail  into  the  claws  of  the  old  bonne,  a  woman  of  the 
lowest  type,  who  had  already  plundered  all  she  could.  As  to  the 
wretched  husband,  very  little  information  was  forthcoming. 
John  believed  that  he  had  been  removed  to  the  hospital  in  a  state 
of  alcoholic  paralysis  the  very  week  that  C6cile  was  taken  ill ;  at 
any  rate  he  had  made  no  sign. 

The  rest  of  the  story  which  Dora  had  to  tell  may  be  supple- 
mented by  a  few  details  which  were  either  unknown  to  his 
informants,  or  remained  unknown  to  David. 

Louie,  on  her  return  to  Paris  with  David's  hundred  pounds, 
had  promptly  staked  the  greater  part  of  it  in  certain  Bourse 
speculations.  She  was  quite  as  sorely  in  need  of  money  as  she 
had  professed  to  be  while  in  Manchester,  but  for  more  reasons 
than  one,  as  David  had  uncomfortably  suspected.  Not  only  did 
her  husband  strip  her  of  anything  he  could  lay  hands  on,  but  a 
certain  fair-haired  Alsatian  artist  a  good  deal  younger  than  her- 
self had  for  some  months  been  preying  upon  her.  What  his  hold 
upon  her  precisely  was,  Father  Lenoir,  her  director,  when  David 
went  to  see  him,  either  could  not  or — because  the  matter  was 
covered  by  the  confessional  seal — would  not  say.  The  artist, 
Bre'nart  by  name,  was  a  handsome  youth,  with  a  droll  facile 
tongue,  and  a  recklessness  of  temper  matching  her  own.  He 
became  first  known  to  her  as  one  of  her  husband's  drinking  com- 
panions, then,  dazzled  by  the  wife's  mad  beauty,  he  began  to 
haunt  the  handsome  Madame  Montjoie,  as  many  other  persons 
had  haunted  her  before  him, — with  no  particular  results  except 
to  increase  the  arrogant  self-complacency  with  which  Louie  bore 
herself  among  her  Catholic  friends. 

In  the  first  year  of  his  passion,  Bre'nart  came  into  a  small 
inheritance,  much  of  which  he  spent  on  jewellery  and  other 
presents  for  his  idol.  She  accepted  them  without  scruple,  and 
his  hopes  naturally  rose  high.  But  in  a  few  months  he  ran 
through  his  money,  his  drinking  habits,  under  Montjoie's  lead, 
grew  upon  him,  and  he  fell  rapidly  into  a  state  of  degradation 
which  would  have  made  it  very  easy  for  Louie  to  shake  him  off, 
had  she  been  so  minded. 

But  by  this  time  he  had,  no  doubt,  a  curious  spell  for  hex. 
He  was  a  person  of  considerable  gifts,  an  etcher  of  fantastic 
promise,  a  clever  musician,  and  the  owner  of  a  humorous  carillon 
of  talk,  to  quote  M.  Kenan's  word,  which  made  life  in  his  neigh- 
bourhood perpetually  amusing  for  those,  at  any  rate,  who  took  the 
grossness  of  its  themes  as  a  matter  of  course.  Louie  found  on 
the  one  hand  that  she  could  not  do  without  him,  in  her  miserable 
existence  ;  on  the  other  that  if  he  was  not  to  starve  she  mugt 


548  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

keep  him.  His  misfortunes  revealed  the  fact  that  there  was 
neither  chivalry  nor  delicacy  in  him  ;  and  he  learnt  to  live  upon 
her  with  surprising  quickness,  and  on  the  most  romantic  pretexts. 

So  she  made  her  pilgrimage  to  Manchester  for  money,  and 
then  she  played  with  her  money  to  make  it  more,  on  the  Bourse. 
But  clever  as  she  was,  luck  was  against  her,  and  she  lost.  Her 
losses  made  her  desperate.  So  too  did  the  behaviour  of  her  hus- 
band, who  robbed  her  whenever  he  could,  and  spent  most  of  his 
time  on  the  pavements  of  Paris,  dragging  himself  from  one  low 
drinking-shop  to  another,  only  coming  home  to  cheat  her  out  of 
fresh  supplies,  and  goad  his  wife  to  hideous  scenes  of  quarrel  and 
violence,  which  frightened  the  life  out  of  Cecile.  BrSnart,  whom 
she  could  no  longer  subsidise,  kept  aloof,  for  mixed  reasons  of  his 
own.  And  the  landlord,  not  to  be  trifled  with  any  longer,  gave 
them  summary  notice  of  eviction. 

While  she  was  in  these  straits,  Father  Lenoir,  who  even  during 
these  months  of  vacillating  passion  and  temptation  had  exercised 
a  certain  influence  over  her,  came  to  call  upon  her  one  afternoon, 
being  made  anxious  by  her  absence  from  Ste.  Eulalie.  He  found 
a  wild-eyed  haggard  woman  in  a  half-dismantled  apartment, 
whom,  for  the  first  time,  he  could  not  affect  by  any  of  those  arts 
of  persuasion  or  rebuke,  in  which  his  long  experience  as  a  guide 
of  souls  had  trained  him.  She  would  tell  him  nothing  either 
about  her  plans,  or  her  husband  ;  she  did  not  respond  to  his 
skilful  and  reproachful  comments  upon  her  failure  to  give  them 
assistance  in  a  recent  great  function  at  Ste.  Eulalie  ;  nor  was  she 
moved  by  the  tone  of  solemn  and  fatherly  exhortation  into  which 
he  gradually  passed.  He  left  her,  fearing  the  worst. 

On  the  following  morning  she  fled  to  the  wretched  house  on 
the  outskirts  of  Paris  where  Dora  had  found  her.  She  went 
thither  to  escape  from  her  husband  ;  to  avoid  the  landlord's  pur- 
suit ;  to  cut  herself  adrift  from  the  clergy  of  Ste.  Eulalie,  and  to 
concert  with  Br6nart  a  new  plan  of  life.  But  Br6nart  failed  to 
meet  her  there,  and,  a  very  few  days  after  the  flight,  Cecile, 
already  worn  to  a  shadow,  sickened  with  diphtheria.  Either  the 
seeds  were  already  in  her  when  they  left  Paris,  or  she  was 
poisoned  by  the  half-finished  drainage  and  general  insanitary 
state  of  the  quarter  to  which  they  had  removed. 

From  the  moment  the  child  took  to  her  bed,  Louie  fell  into 
the  blackest  despair.  She  had  often  ill-used  her  daughter  during 
these  last  months ;  the  trembling  child,  always  in  the  house, 
had  again  and  again  been  made  the  scapegoat  of  her  mother's 
miseries  ;  but  she  no  sooner  threatened  to  die  than  Louie  threw 
everything  else  in  the  world  aside  and  was  madly  determined  she 
should  live. 

She  got  a  doctor,  of  an  inferior  sort,  from  the  neighbourhood, 
and  when  he  seemed  to  her  to  bungle,  and  the  child  got  no  better, 
she  drove  him  out  of  the  house  with  contumely.  Then  she  her- 
self tried  to  caustic  Cecile's  throat,  or  she  applied  some  of  the  old- 
wives'  remedies,  suggested  by  the  low  servant  she  had  taken.  The 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  549 

result  was  that  the  poor  little  victim  was  brought  to  the  edge  of 
the  grave,  and  Louie,  reduced  to  abjectness,  went  and  humbled 
herself  to  the  doctor  and  brought  him  back.  This  time  he  told 
her  bluntly  that  the  child  was  dying  and  nothing  could  save  her. 
Then,  in  her  extremity,  she  telegraphed  to  David.  Her  brother 
had  written  to  her  twice  since  the  beginning  of  Lucy's  illness  ; 
but  when  she  sent  her  telegram,  all  remembrance  of  her  sister-in- 
law  had  vanished  from  Louie's  mind — Lucy  might  never  have 
existed  ;  and  whether  she  was  alive  or  dead  mattered  nothing. 

When  Dora  came,  she  found  the  child  speechless,  and  near 
the  end.  Tracheotomy  had  been  performed,  but  its  failure  was 
already  clear.  It  seemed  a  question  of  hours.  John  went  off 
post-haste  for  a  famous  doctor.  The  great  man  came,  agreed 
with  the  local  practitioner  that  nothing  more  could  be  done,  and 
that  death  was  imminent.  Louie,  beside  herself,  first  turned  and 
rent  him,  and  then  fell  in  a  dead  faint  beside  Cecile's  bed.  While 
the  nurse,  whom  John  had  also  brought  from  Paris,  was  tending 
both  mother  and  daughter,  Dora  sent  John — who  in  these  years 
had  acquired  a  certain  smattering  of  foreign  languages  under  the 
pressure  of  printing-room  needs  and  David's  counsel — to  inquire 
for  and  fetch  a  priest.  She  was  in  an  agony  lest  the  child  should 
die  without  the  sacraments  of  her  Church. 

The  priest  came — a  young  man  of  a  heavy  peasant  type — bearing 
the  Host.  Never  did  Dora  forget  that  scene — the  emaciated  child 
gasping  her  life  away,  the  strange  people,  dimly  seen  amid  the 
wreaths  of  incense,  who  seemed  to  her  to  have  flocked  in  from 
the  street  in  the  wake  of  the  priest,  to  look — the  sacred  words  and 
gestures  in  the  midst,  which,  because  of  the  quick  unintelligible 
Latin,  she  could  only  follow  as  a  mystery  of  ineffable  and  saving 
power,  the  same,  so  she  believed,  for  Anglican  and  Catholic — 
and  by  the  bedside  the  sullen  erect  form  of  the  mother,  who  could 
not  be  induced  to  take  any  part  whatever  in  the  ceremony. 

But  when  it  was  all  over,  and  the  little  procession  which  had 
brought  the  Host  was  forming  once  more,  Louie  thrust  Dora  and 
the  nurse  violently  away  from  the  bed,  and  bent  her  ear  down  to 
Cecile's  mouth.  She  gave  a  wild  and  hideous  cry  ;  then  drawing 
herself  to  her  full  height,  with  a  tragic  magnificence  of  movement 
she  stretched  out  one  shaking  hand  over  the  poor  little  wasted 
body,  while  with  the  other  she  pointed  to  the  priest  in  his  white 
officiating  dress. 

'  Go  out  of  this  house  ! — go  this  instant !  Who  brought  you 
in  ?  Not  I  !  I  tell  you, — last  night ' — she  flung  the  phrases  out 
in  fierce  gasps — '  I  gave  God  the  chance.  I  said  to  Him,  Make 
C^cile  well,  and  I'll  behave  myself — I'll  listen  to  Father  Lenoir. 
Much  good  I've  got  by  it  all  this  time  ! — but  I  will.  I'll  live  on  a 
crust,  and  I'll  give  all  I  can  skin  and  scrape  to  those  people  at 
Ste.  Eulalie.  If  not — then  I'll  go  to  the  devil — to  the  devil !  Do 
you  hear  ?  I  swore  that. ' 

Her  voice  sank  to  a  hoarse  whisper  ;  she  bent  down,  still  keep- 
ing everyone  at  bay  and  at  a  distance  from  her  dead  child, — 


550  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

though  Dora  ran  to  her — her  head  turned  over  her  shoulder,  her 
glowing  eyes  of  hatred  fixed  upon  the  priest. 

'  She  is  mad  ! '  he  said  to  himself,  receding  quickly,  lest  the 
sacred  burden  he  bore  should  suffer  any  indignity. 

At  that  moment  she  fell  heavily  on  her  knees  beside  the  bed 
insensible,  her  dark  head  lying  on  Ce"cile's  arm.  Dora,  in  a  pale 
trance  of  terror,  closed  little  Chile's  weary  eyes,  the  nurse  cleared 
the  room,  and  they  laid  Louie  on  her  bed. 

When  she  revived,  she  crawled  to  the  place  where  Ce"cile  lay  in 
her  white  grave-dress  strewn  with  flowers,  and  again  put  every- 
one away,  locking  herself  in  with  the  body.  But  the  rules  of 
interment  in  the  case  of  infectious  diseases  are  strict  in  France  ; 
the  authorities  concerned  intervened  ;  and  after  scenes  of  in- 
describable misery  and  violence,  the  little  corpse  was  carried 
away,  and,  thanks  to  Dora's  and  John's  care,  received  tender  and 
reverent  burial. 

The  mother  was  too  exhausted  to  resist  any  more.  When  Dora 
came  back  from  the  funeral,  the  nurse  told  her  that  Madame 
Montjoie,  after  having  refused  all  meat  or  drink  for  two  days, 
had  roused  herself  from  what  seemed  the  state  of  stupor  in  which 
the  departure  of  the  funeral  procession  had  left  her,  had  asked 
for  brandy,  which  had  been  given  her,  and  had  then,  of  her  own 
accord,  swallowed  a  couple  of  opium  pills,  which  the  doctor  had 
so  far  vainly  prescribed  for  her,  and  was  now  heavily  asleep. 

Dora  went  to  her  own  bed,  too  tired  to  stand,  yet  inexpressi- 
bly relieved.  Her  bed  was  a  heap  of  wraps  contrived  for  her  by 
the  nurse  on  the  floor  of  the  lower  room — a  bare  den,  reeking  of 
damp,  which  called  itself  the  salon.  But  she  had  never  rested 
anywhere  with  such  helpless  thankfulness.  For  some  hours  at 
least,  agony  and  conflict  were  still,  and  she  had  a  moment  in 
which  to  weep  for  Lucy,  the  news  of  whose  death  had  now  lain 
for  two  days  a  dragging  weight  at  her  heart.  Hateful  memory  ! 
— she  had  forced  her  way  in  to  Louie  with  the  letter,  thinking  in 
her  innocence  that  the  knowledge  of  the  brother's  bereavement 
must  touch  the  sister,  or  at  least  momentarily  divert  her  attention: 
and  Louie  had  dashed  it  down  with  the  inconceivable  words, — 
Dora's  cheek  burnt  with  anguish  and  shame,  as  she  tried  to  put 
them  out  of  her  mind  for  ever, — 

'  Very  well.  Now,  then,  you  can  marry  him  !  You  know 
you've  always  wanted  to  ! ' 

But  at  last  that  biting  voice  was  hushed ;  there  was  not  a 
sound  in  the  house  ;  the  summer  night  descended  gently  on  the 
wretched  street,  and  in  the  midst  of  anxious  discussion  with  her- 
self as  to  how  she  and  John  were  to  get  Louie  to  England,  she  fell 
asleep. 

When  Dora  awoke,  Louie  was  not  in  the  house.  After  a  few 
hours  of  opium-sleep,  she  must  have  noiselessly  put  together  all 
her  valuables  and  money,  a  few  trifles  belonging  to  C6cile,  and  a 
small  parcel  of  clothes,  and  have  then  slipped  out  through  the 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  551 

garden  door,  and  into  a  back  lane  or  track,  which  would  ulti- 
mately lead  her  down  to  the  bank  of  the  river.  None  of  the  three 
other  persons  sleeping  in  the  house — Dora,  the  nurse,  the  old 
bonne,  had  heard  a  sound. 

When  John  arrived  in  the  morning,  his  practical  common 
sense  suggested  a  number  of  measures  for  Louie's  pursuit,  or  for 
the  discovery  of  her  fate,  should  she  have  made  away  with 
herself,  as  he  more  than  suspected — measures  which  were 
immediately  taken  by  himself,  or  by  the  lawyer,  Mr.  O'Kelly. 

Everything  had  so  far  been  in  vain.  No  trace  of  the  fugitive 
— living  or  dead — could  be  found. 

David,  sitting  with  his  arms  on  the  deal  table  in  the  lower 
room,  and  his  face  in  his  hands,  listened  in  almost  absolute 
silence  to  the  main  facts  of  the  story.  When  he  looked  up,  it  was 
to  say,  '  Have  you  been  to  Father  Lenoir  ? ' 

No.     Neither  Dora  nor  John  knew  anything  of  Father  Lenoir. 

David  went  off  at  once.  The  good  priest  was  deeply  touched 
and  overcome  by  the  story,  but  not  astonished.  He  first  told 
David  of  the  existence  of  Brenart,  and  search  was  instantly  made 
for  the  artist.  He,  too,  was  missing,  but  the  police,  whose  cordial 
assistance  David,  by  the  help  of  Lord  Driffield's  important  friends 
in  Paris,  was  able  to  secure,  were  confident  of  immediate  dis- 
covery. Day  after  day  passed,  however  ;  innumerable  false  clues 
were  started  ;  but  at  the  end  of  some  weeks  Louie's  fate  was  much 
of  a  secret  as  ever. 

Dora  and  John  had,  of  course,  gone  back  to  England  directly 
after  David's  arrival ;  and  he  now  felt  that  his  child  and  his  work 
called  him.  He  returned  home  towards  the  middle  of  August, 
leaving  the  search  for  his  sister  in  Mr.  O'Kelly's  hands. 

For  five  months  David  remained  doggedly  at  his  work  in 
Prince's  Street.  John  watched  him  silently  from  day  to  day, 
showing  him  a  quiet  devotion  which  sometimes  brought  his  old 
comrade's  hand  upon  his  shoulder  in  a  quick  touch  of  gratitude, 
or  a  flash  to  eyes  heavy  with  broken  sleep.  The  winter  was  a  bad 
one  for  trade ;  the  profits  made  by  Grieve  &  Co.,  even  on  much 
business,  were  but  small ;  and  in  the  consultative  council  of 
employe's  which  David  had  established  the  chairman  constantly 
showed  a  dreaminess  or  an  irritability  in  difficult  circumstances 
which  in  earlier  days  would  have  cost  him  influence  and  success. 
But  the  men,  who  knew  him  well,  looked  at  each  other  askance, 
and  either  spoke  their  minds  or  bore  with  him  as  seemed  best. 
They  were  well  aware  that  while  wages  everywhere  else  had  been 
cut  down,  theirs  were  undiminished  ;  that  the  profits  from  the 
second-hand  book  trade  which  remained  nominally  outside  the 
profit-sharing  partnership  were  practically  all  spent  in  furthering 
the  social  ends  of  it ;  and  that  the  master,  in  his  desolate  house, 
with  his  two  maid-servants,  one  of  them  his  boy's  nurse,  lived  as 
modestly  as  any  of  them,  yet  with  help  always  to  spare  for  the 
sick  and  the  unfortunate.  To  a  man  they  remained  loyal  to  the 


552  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  rv 

firm  and  the  scheme ;  but  among  even  the  best  of  them  there  was 
a  curious  difference  of  opinion  as  to  David  and  his  ways.  They 
profited  by  them,  and  they  would  see  him  through  ;  but  there  was 
an  uncomfortable  feeling  that,  if  such  ideas  were  to  spread,  they 
might  cut  both  ways  and  interfere  too  much  with  the  easy  living 
which  the  artisan  likes  and  desires  as  much  .as  any  other  man. 

Meanwhile,  those  who  have  followed  the  history  of  David 
Grieve  with  any  sympathy  will  not  find  it  difficult  to  believe  that 
this  autumn  and  winter  were  with  him  a  time  of  intense  mental 
anguish  and  depression.  The  shock  and  tragedy  of  Louie's  dis- 
appearance following  on  the  prolonged  nervous  exhaustion  caused 
by  Lucy's  struggle  for  life  had  brought  him  into  a  state  similar  to 
that  in  which  his  first  young  grief  had  left  him  ;  only  with  this 
difference,  that  the  nature  being  now  deeper  and  richer  was  but 
the  more  capable  of  suffering.  The  passion  of  religious  faith 
which  had  carried  him  through  Lucy's  death  had  dwindled  by 
natural  reaction ;  he  believed,  but  none  the  less  he  walked  in 
darkness.  The  cruelty  of  his  wife's  fate,  meditated  upon  through 
lonely  and  restless  nights,  tortured  beyond  bearing  a  soul  made 
for  pity ;  and  every  now  and  then  wild  fits  of  remorse  for  his 
original  share  in  Louie's  sins  and  misfortunes  would  descend  upon 
him,  and  leave  no  access  to  reason. 

His  boy,  his  work,  and  his  books,  these  were  ultimately  his 
protections  from  himself.  Sandy  climbed  about  him,  or  got  into 
mischief  with  salutary  frequency.  The  child  slept  beside  his 
father  at  night,  and  in  the  evenings  was  always  either  watching 
for  him  at  the  gate  or  standing  thumb  in  mouth  with  his  face 
pressed  against  the  window,  and  his  bright  eye  scanning  the  dusk. 

For  the  rest,  after  a  first  period  of  utter  numbness  and  languor, 
David  was  once  more  able  to  read,  and  he  read  with  voracity — • 
science,  philosophy,  belles  lettres.  Two  subjects,  however,  held 
his  deepest  mind  all  through,  whatever  might  be  added  to  them — 
the  study  of  ethics,  in  their  bearing  upon  religious  conceptions, 
and  the  study  of  Christian  origins.  His  thoughts  about  them  found 
occasional  outlet,  either  in  his  talks  with  Ancrum — whose  love 
soothed  him,  and  whose  mind,  with  all  its  weaknesses  and  its 
strong  Catholic  drift,  he  had  long  found  to  be  infinitely  freer  and 
more  hospitable  in  the  matter  of  ideas  than  the  average  Anglican 
mind — or  in  his  journal. 

A  few  last  extracts  from  the  journal  may  be  given.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  the  southern  element  in  him  made  such  a 
mode  of  expression  more  easy  and  natural  to  him  than  it  ever  can 
be  to  most  Englishmen. 

'  November  2nd. — It  seems  to  me  that  last  night  was  the  first 
night  since  she  died  that  I  have  not  dreamt  of  her.  As  a  rule,  I 
am  always  with  her  in  sleep,  and  for  that  reason  I  am  the  more 
covetous  of  the  sleep  which  comes  to  me  so  hardly.  It  is  a  second 
life.  Yet  before  her  illness,  during  our  married  life,  I  hardly 
knew  what  it  was  to  dream. 

'  Two  nights  ago  I  thought  I  was  standing  beside  her.     She 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  558 

wa?  lying  on  the  long  couch  under  the  sycamore  tree  whither  we 
used  to  carry  her.  At  first,  everything  was  wholly  lifelike  and 
familiar.  Sandy  was  somewhere  near.  She  had  the  grey  camel's 
hair  shawl  over  her  shoulders,  which  I  remember  so  .well,  and  the 
white  frilled  cap  drawn  loosely  together  under  her  chin,  over 
bandages  and  dressings,  as  usual.  She  asked  me  to  fetch  some- 
thing for  her  from  the  house,  and  I  went,  full  of  joy.  There 
seemed  to  be  a  strange  mixed  sense  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart 
that  I  had  somehow  lost  her  and  found  her  again. 

'  When  I  came  back,  nurse  was  there,  and  everything  was 
changed.  Nurse  looked  at  me  with  meaning,  startled  eyes,  as 
much  as  to  say,  "Look  closely,  it  is  not  as  you  think."  And  as  I 
went  up  to  her,  lying  still  and  even  smiling  on  her  couch,  there 
was  an  imperceptible  raising  of  her  little  white  hand  as  though  to 
keep  me  off.  Then  in  a  flash  I  saw  that  it  was  not  my  living  Lucy  ; 
that  it  could  only  be  her  spirit.  I  felt  an  awful  sense  of  separa- 
tion and  yet  of  yearning ;  sitting  down  on  one  of  the  mossy  stones 
beside  her,  I  wept  bitterly,  and  so  woke,  bathed  in  tears. 

' .  .  .It  has  often  seemed  to  me  lately  that  certain  elements 
in  the  Eesurrection  stories  may  be  originally  traced  to  such 
experiences  as  these.  I  am  irresistibly  drawn  to  believe  that  the 
strange  and  mystic  scene  beside  the  lake,  in  the  appendix  chapter 
to  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  arose  in  some  such.  way.  There  is  the 
same  mixture  of  elements — of  the  familiar  with  the  ghostly,  the 
trivial  with  the  passionate  and  exalted — which  my  own  conscious- 
ness has  so  often  trembled  under  in  these  last  visionary  months. 
The  well-known  lake,  the  old  scene  of  fishers  and  fishing-boats, 
and  on  the  shore  the  mysterious  figure  of  the  Master,  the  same, 
yet  not  the  same,  the  little,  vivid,  dream-like  details  of  the  fire  of 
coals,  the  broiled  fish,  and  bread,  the  awe  and  longing  of  the 
disciples — it  is  borne  in  upon  me  with  extraordinary  conviction 
that  the  whole  of  it  sprang,  to  begin  with,  from  the  dream  of 
grief  and  exhaustion.  Then,  in  an  age  which  attached  a  peculiar 
and  mystical  importance  to  dreams,  the  beautiful  thrilling  fancy 
passed  from  mouth  to  mouth,  became  almost  immediately  history 
instead  of  dream, — just  as  here  and  there  a  parable  misunderstood 
has  taken  the  garb  of  an  event, — was  after  a  while  added  to  and 
made  more  precise  in  the  interest  of  apologetics,  or  of  doctrine, 
or  of  the  simple  love  of  elaboration,  and  so  at  last  found  a  final 
resting-place  as  an  epilogue  to  the  fourth  Gospel. ' 

'  November  4th. — To-night  I  have  dared  to  read  again  Brown- 
ing's "  Eabbi  ben  Ezra."  For  months  I  have  not  been  able  to  read 
it,  or  think  of  it,  though  for  days  and  weeks  towards  the  end  of 
her  life  it  seemed  to  be  graven  on  my  heart. 

Look  not  thou  down,  but  up  ! 

To  uses  of  a  cup, 
The  festal  board,  lamp's  flash,  and  trumpet's  pea^. 

The  new  wine's  foaming  glow, 

The  Master's  lips  a-glow  ! 
Thou  heaven's  consummate  cup,  what  need'st  thou  with  earth's  wheel  1 


554  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IV 

'  Let  me  think  again,  my  God,  of  that  astonishing  ripening  of 
her  last  days  ! — of  all  her  little  acts  of  love  and  gratitude  towards 
me,  towards  her  nurse,  towards  the  people  in  the  house,  who  had 
helped  to  tend  her — of  her  marvellous  submission,  when  once  the 
black  cloud  of  the  fear  of  death,  and  the  agony  of  parting  from 
life  had  left  her. 

'  And  such  facts  alone  in  the  world's  economy  are  to  have  no 
meaning,  point  no-whither  ?  I  could  as  soon  believe  it  as  that,  in 
the  physical  universe,  the  powers  of  the  magnet,  or  the  flash  of 
the  lightning,  are  isolated  and  meaningless — tell  us  nothing  and 
lead  nowhere.' 

'  November  10th. — In  the  old  days — there  is  a  passage  of  the 
kind  in  an  earlier  part  of  this  journal — I  was  constantly  troubled, 
and  not  for  myself  only,  but  for  others,  the  poor  and  unlearned 
especially,  who,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  would  lose  most  in  the  crum- 
bling of  the  Christian  mythology — as  to  the  intellectual  difficulties 
of  the  approach  to  God.  All  this  philosophical  travail  of  two 
thousand  years — and  so  many  doubts  and  darknesses  !  A  world 
athirst  for  preaching,  and  nothing  simple  or  clear  to  preach — 
when  once  the  miracle-child  of  Bethlehem  had  been  dispossessed. 
And  now  it  is  daylight-plain  to  me  that  in  the  simplest  act  of 
loving  self-surrender  there  is  the  germ  of  all  faith,  the  essence 
of  all  lasting  religion.  Quicken  human  service,  purify  and 
strengthen  human  love,  and  have  no  fear  but  that  the  conscience 
will  find  its  God  !  For  all  the  time  this  quickening  and  this  puri- 
fication are  His  work  in  thee.  Around  thee  are  the  institutions, 
the  ideals,  the  knowledge  and  beliefs,  ethical  or  intellectual,  in 
which  that  work,  that  life,  have  been  so  far  fragmentarily  and 
partially  realised.  Submit  thyself  and  press  forward.  Thou 
knowest  well  what  it  means  to  be  better :  more  pure,  more  loving, 
more  self-denying.  And  in  thy  struggle  to  be  all  these,  God 
cometh  to  thee  and  abides.  .  .  .  But  the  greatest  of  'these  is  love  J '' 

'November  20th. — To-day  I  have  finished  the  last  of  my  New 
Testament  tracts,  the  last  at  any  rate  for  a  time.  While  Ancrum 
lives  I  have  resolved  to  suspend  them.  They  trouble  him  deeply  ; 
and  I,  who  owe  him  so  much,  will  not  voluntarily  add  to  his 
burden.  His  wife  is  with  him,  a  somewhat  heavy,  dark-faced 
woman,  with  a  slumbrous  eye,  which  may,  however,  be  capable 
of  kindling.  They  have  left  Mortimer  Street,  and  have  gone  to 
live  in  a  little  house  on  the  road  to  Cheadle.  He  seems  perfectly 
happy,  and  though  the  doctor  is  discouraging,  I  at  least  can  see 
no  change  for  the  worse.  She  sits  by  him  and  reads  or  works, 
without  much  talking,  but  is  all  the  time  attentive  to  his  lightest 
movement.  Friends  send  them  flowers  which  brighten  the  little 
house,  his  "  boys"  visit  him  in  the  evenings,  he  is  properly  fed, 
and  altogether  I  am  more  happy  about  him  than  I  have  been  for 
long.  It  required  considerable  courage,  this  move,  on  her  part ; 
for  there  are  a  certain  number  of  people  still  left  who  knew 
Ancrum  at  college,  and  remember  the  story  ;  and  those  who 


CHAP,  x  MATURITY  655 

believed  him  a  bachelor  are  of  course  scandalised  and  wondering. 
But  the  talk,  whatever  it  is,  does  not  seem  to  molest  them  much. 
He  offered  to  leave  Manchester,  but  she  would  not  let  him. 
"  What  would  he  do  away  from  you  and  his  boys  ?"  she  said  to 
me.  There  is  a  heroism  in  it  all  the  same. 

' ...  So  my  New  Testament  work  may  rest  a  while. — During 
these  autumn  weeks,  it  has  helped  me  through  some  terrible 
hours. 

'  When  I  look  back  over  the  mass  of  patient  labour  which  has 
accumulated  during  the  present  century  round  the  founder  of 
Christianity  and  the  origins  of  his  society — when  I  compare  the 
text-books  of  the  day  with  the  text-books  of  sixty  years  ago— I 
no  longer  wonder  at  the  empty  and  ignorant  arrogance  with 
which  the  French  eighteenth  century  treated  the  whole  subject. 
The  first  stone  of  the  modern  building  had  not  been  laid  when 
Voltaire  wrote,  unless  perhaps  in  the  Wolfenbuttel  fragments. 
He  knew,  in  truth,  no  more  than  the  Jesuits,  much  less  in  fact 
than  the  better  men  among  them. 

' ...  It  has  been  like  the  unravelling  of  a  piece  of  fine  and 
ancient  needlework — and  so  discovering  the  secrets  of  its  make 
and  craftsmanship.  A  few  loose  ends  were  first  followed  up ; 
then  gradually  the  whole  tissue  has  been  involved,  till  at  last  the 
nature  and  quality  of  each  thread,  the  purpose  and  the  skill  of 
each  stitch,  are  becoming  plain,  and  what  was  mystery  rises  into 
knowledge. 

' .  .  .  But  how  close  and  fine  a  web  ! — and  how  difficult  and 
patient  the  process  by  which  Christian  reality  has  to  be  grasped  ! 
There  is  no  short  cut — one  must  toil. 

'  But  after  one  has  toiled,  what  are  the  rewards  ?  Truth  first 
—which  is  an  end  in  itself  and  not  a  means  to  anything  beyond. 
Then — the  great  figure  of  Christianity  given  back  to  you — with 
something  at  least  of  the  first  magic,  the  first  "  natural  truth  " 
of  look  and  tone.  Through  and  beyond  dogmatic  overlay,  and 
Messianic  theory  and  wonder-loving  addition,  to  recover,  at  least 
fragmentarily,  the  actual  voice,  the  first  meaning,  which  is  also 
the  eternal  meaning,  of  Jesus — Paul — "John  "  ! 

'  Finally — a  conception  of  Christianity  in  which  you  discern 
once  more  its  lasting  validity  and  significance — its  imperishable 
place  in  human  life.  It  becomes  simply  that  preaching  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  which  belongs  to  and  affects  you — you,  the 
modern  European — just  as  Greek  philosophy,  Stoic  or  Cynic,  was 
that  preaching  of  it  which  belonged  to  and  affected  Epictetus.' 

'  November  2±th. — Mr.  O'Kelly  writes  to  me  to-day  his  usual 
hopeless  report.  No  news  !  I  do  not  even  know  whether  she  is 
alive,  and  I  can  do  nothing — absolutely  nothing. 

'  Yes — let  me  correct  myself,  there  is  some  news — of  an  event 
which,  if  we  could  find  her,  might  simplify  matters  a  little. 
Montjoie  is  dead  in  hospital — at  the  age  of  thirty -six — 

'  Is  there  any  other  slavery  and  chain  like  that  of  tempera 


556  THE  HISTORY  OP  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

ment?  As  I  look  back  on  the  whole  course  of  my  relation  to 
Louie,  I  am  conscious  only  of  a  sickening  sense  of  utter  failure. 
Our  father  left  her  to  me,  and  I  have  not  been  able  to  hold  her 
back  from — nay,  I  have  helped  to  plunge  her  into  the  most 
obvious  and  commonplace  ruin.  Yet  I  am  always  asking  myself, 
if  it  were  to  do  again,  could  I  do  any  better?  Has  any  other 
force  developed  in  me  which  would  make  it  possible  for  me  now 
to  break  through  the  barriers  between  her  nature  and  mine,  to 
love  her  sincerely,  asking  for  nothing  again,  to  help  her  to  a 
saner  and  happier  life  ? 

'  If  sometimes  I  dream  that  so  it  is,  it  is  to  her  I  owe  it — to 
Tier  whom  I  carry  on  my  bosom,  and  whose  hand  did  once,  or  so 
it  seemed,  unlock  to  me  the  gates  of  God.  Lucy  !  my  Lucy  ! 

' .  .  .  All  my  past  life  becomes  sometimes  intolerable  to  me. 
I  can  see  nothing  in  it  that  is  not  tarnished  and  flecked  with 
black  stains  of  egotism,  pride,  hardness,  moral  indolence. 

'  And  the  only  reparation  possible,  "  Be  ye  transformed  by  the 
renewing  of  your  minds,"  at  which  my  fainting  heart  sinks. 

'Sometimes  I  find  much  comfort  in  the  saying  of  a  lonely 
thinker,  "  Let  us  humbly  accept  from  God  even  our  own  nature  ; 
not  that  we  are  called  upon  to  accept  the  evil  and  the  disease  in 
us,  but  let  us  accept  ourselves  in  spite  of  the  evil  and  the  disease." 

'  Que  vivre  est  difficile — 6  mon  coeur  fatigue /' 


CHAPTER  XI 

BY  the  end  of  December  David  Grieve  was  near  breaking  down. 
Dr.  Mildmay  insisted  brusquely  on  his  going  away. 

'  As  far  as  I  can  see  you  will  live  to  be  an  old  man,'  he  said, 
4  but  if  you  go  on  like  this,  it  will  be  with  shattered  powers.  You 
are  driving  yourself  to  death,  yet  at  the  present  moment  you 
have  no  natural  driving  force.  It  is  all  artificial,  a  matter  of 
will.  Do,  for  heaven's  sake,  get  away  from  these  skies  and  these 
streets,  and  leave  all  work  and  all  social  reforms  behind.  The 
first  business  of  the  citizen — prate  as  you  like  ! — is  to  keep  his 
nerves  and  his  digestion  in  going  order. ' 

David  laughed  and  yielded.  The  advice,  in  fact,  corresponded 
to  an  inward  thirst,  and  had,  moreover,  a  coincidence  to  back  it. 
In  one  of  the  Manchester  papers  two  or  three  mornings  before  he 
had  seen  the  advertisement  of  a  farm  to  let.  which  had  set 
vibrating  all  his  passion  for  and  memory  of  the  moorland.  It 
was  a  farm  about  half  a  mile  from  Needham  Farm,  on  one  of  the 
lower  slopes  of  Kinder  Low.  It  had  belonged  to  a  peasant  owner, 
lately  dead.  The  heirs  wished  to  sell,  but  failing  a  purchase1' 
were  willing  to  let  on  a  short  lease. 

It  was  but  a  small  grazing  farm,  and  the  rent  was  low.  Davift 
went  to  the  agent,  took  it  at  once,  and  in  a  few  days,  to  the 
amazement  of  Reuben  and  Hannah,  to  whom  he  wrote  only  the 
night  before  he  arrived,  he  and  Sandy,  and  a  servant,  were  estab- 


CHAP,  ii  MATURITY  557 

lished  with  a  minimum  of  furniture,  but  a  sufficiency  of  blankets 
and  coals,  in  two  or  three  rooms  of  the  little  grey-walled  house. 

'  Well,  it  caps  me,  it  do ! '  Hannah  said  to  herself,  in  her 
astonishment  as  she  stood  on  her  own  doorstep  the  day  after 
the  arrival,  and  watched  the  figures  of  David  and  Sandy  disap- 
pearing along  the  light  crisp  snow  of  the  nearer  fields  in  the 
direction  of  the  Ked  Brook  and  the  sheep-fold.  They  had  looked 
in  to  ask  for  Reuben,  and  had  gone  in  pursuit  of  him. 

What  on  earth  should  make  a  man  in  the  possession  of  his 
natural  senses  leave  a  warm  town-house  in  January,  and  come  to 
camp  in  '  owd  Ben's '  farm,  was,  indeed,  past  ifannah  s  divination. 
In  reality,  no  sudden  resolve  could  have  been  happier.  Sandy 
was  a  hardy  little  fellow,  and  with  the  first  breath  of  the  moor- 
land wind  David  felt  a  load,  which  had  been  growing  too  heavy 
to  bear,  lifting  from  his  breast.  His  youth,  his  manhood,  re- 
asserted themselves.  The  bracing  clearness  of  what  seemed  to 
be  the  setting-in  of  a  long  frost  put  a  new  life  into  him  ;  winter's 
'  bright  and  intricate  device '  of  ice-fringed  stream,  of  rimy  grass, 
of  snow-clad  moor,  of  steel-blue  skies,  filled  him  once  more  with 
natural  joy,  carried  him  out  of  himself.  He  could  not  keep  him- 
self indoors  ;  he  went  about  with  Reuben  or  the  shepherd,  after 
the  sheep  ;  he  fed  the  cattle  at  Needham  Farm,  and  brought  his 
old  knowledge  to  bear  on  the  rearing  of  a  sickly  calf  ;  he  watched 
for  the  grouse,  or  he  carried  his  pockets  full  of  bread  for  the  few 
blackbirds  or  moor-pippits  that  cheered  his  walks  into  the  fissured 
solitudes  of  the  great  Peak  plateau,  walks  which  no  one  to  whom 
every  inch  of  the  ground  was  not  familiar  dared  have  ventured, 
seeing  how  misleading  and  treacherous  even  light  snow-drifts  may 
become  in  the  black  bog-land  of  these  high  and  lonely  moors  ;  or 
he  toiled  up  the  side  of  the  Scout  with  Sandy  on  his  back,  that 
he  might  put  the  boy  on  one  of  the  boulders  beside  the  top  of  the 
Downfall,  and,  holding  him  fast,  bid  him  look  down  at  the  great 
icicles  which  marked  its  steep  and  waterless  bed,  gleaming  in  the 
short-lived  sun. 

The  moral  surroundings,  too,  of  the  change  were  cheering. 
There,  over  the  brow,  in  the  comfortable  little  cottage,  where  he 
had  long  since  placed  her,  with  a  woman  to  look  after  her,  was 
Margaret — quite  childish  and  out  of  her  mind,  but  happy  and 
well  cared  for.  He  and  Sandy  would  trudge  over  from  time  to 
time  to  see  her,  he  carrying  the  boy  in  a  plaid  slung  round  his 
shoulders  when  the  snow  was  deep.  Once  Sandy  went  to  Frimley 
with  the  Needham  Farm  shepherd,  and  when  David  came  to  fetch 
him  he  found  the  boy  and  Margaret  playing  cat's-cradle  together 
by  the  fire,  and  the  eagerness  in  Sandy's  pursed  lips,  and  on  the 
ethereally  blanched  and  shrunken  face  of  Margaret,  brought  the 
tears  to  David's  eyes,  as  he  stood  smiling  and  looking  on.  But 
she  did  not  suffer ;  for  memory  was  gone  ;  only  the  gentle 
'  imperishable  child '  remained. 

And  at  Needham  Farm  lie  had  never  known  the  atmosphere 
BO  still.  Reuben  was  singularly  cheerful  and  placid.  Whether 


558  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         BOOK  rv 

by  the  mere  physical  weakening  of  years,  or  by  some  slow  soften- 
ing of  the  soul,  Hannah  and  her  ways  were  no  longer  the  daily 
scourge  and  perplexity  to  her  husband  they  had  once  been.  She 
was  a  harsh  and  tyrannous  woman  still,  but  not  now  openly 
viperish  or  cruel.  With  the  disappearance  of  old  temptations, 
the  character  had,  to  some  extent,  righted  itself.  Her  sins  of 
avarice  and  oppression  towards  Sandy's  orphans  had  raised  no 
Nemesis  that  could  be  traced,  either  within  or  without.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  she  ever  knew  what  self-reproach  might  mean  ; 
in  word,  at  any  rate,  she  was  to  the  end  as  loudly  confident  as  at 
the  first.  Nevertheless  it  might  certainly  be  said  that  at  sixty- 
she  was  a  better  and  more  tolerable  human  being  than  she  had 
been  at  fifty. 

'  Aye,  if  yo  do  but  live  long  enoof ,  yo  get  past  t'  bad  bits  o'  t' 
road,'  Keuben  said  one  night,  with  a  long  breath,  to  David,  and 
then  checked  himself,  brought  up  either  by  a  look  at  his  nephew's 
mourning  dress,  Or  by  a  recollection  of  what  David  had  told  him 
of  Louie  the  night  before. 

It  troubled  Reuben  indeed,  something  in  the  old  fashion,  that 
his  wife  would  show  no  concern  whatever  for  Louie  when  he 
repeated  to  her  the  details  of  that  disappearance  whereof  so  far 
he  and  she  had  known  only  the  bare  fact. 

'  Aye,  I  thowt  she  'd  bin  and  married  soom  mak  o'  rabble- 
ment,'  remarked  Hannah.  '  Yo  doant  suppose  ony  decent  mon 
ud  put  up  wi  her.  What  Davy  wants  wi  lookin  for  her  I  doant 
know.  He'll  be  hard-set  when  he's  fand  her,  I  should  think.' 

She  was  equally  impervious  and  sarcastic  with  regard  to 
David's  social  efforts.  Her  sharp  tongue  exercised  itself  on  the 
'  poor  way '  in  which  he  seemed  to  live,  and  when  Keuben  repeated 
to  her,  with  some  bewilderment,  the  facts  which  she  had  egged 
him  on  to  get  out  of  David,  her  scorn  knew  no  bounds. 

'  Weel,  it's  like  t'  Bible  after  aw,  Hannah,'  said  Reuben,  per- 
plexed and  remonstrating ;  '  theer  's  things,  yo'll  remember, 
abeawt  gien  t'  coat  off  your  back,  an  sellin  aw  a  mon  has,  an  th' 
loike,  'at  fairly  beats  me  soomtimes.' 

'  Oh — go  long  wi  yo  ! '  said  Hannah  in  high  wrath.  '  He  an 
his  loike  '11  mak  a  halliblash  of  us  aw  soon,  wi  their  silly  faddle, 
an  pamperin  o'  workin  men,  wha  never  wor  an  never  will  be  noa 
better  nor  they  should  be.  But — thank  the  Lord — /'ll  not  be 
theer  to  see.' 

And  after  this  communication  she  found  it  very  difficult  to 
treat  David  civilly. 

But  to  David's  son — to  Sandy — Hannah  Grieve  capitulated,  for 
the  first  and  only  time  in  her  life. 

On  the  second  and  third  day  after  his  arrival,  Sandy  came 
over  with  the  servant  to  ask  Hannah's  help  in  some  small  matter 
of  the  new  household.  As  they  neared  the  farm  door,  Tim,  the 
aged  Tim,  who  was  slouching  behind,  was  suddenly  set  upon  by 
a  new  and  ill-tempered  collie  of  Reuben's,  who  threatened  very 
.soon  to  shake  the  life  out  of  his  poor  toothless  victim.  But 


CHAP,  xi  MATURITY  559 

Sandy,  who  had  a  stick,  rushed  at  him,  his  cheeks  and  eyes  glow- 
ing with  passion. 

'  Get  away !  you  great  big  dog,  you  !  and  leave  my  middle- 
sized  dog  alone ! ' 

And  he  belaboured  and  pulled  at  the  collie,  without  a  thought 
of  fear,  till  the  farm-man  and  Hannah  came  and  separated  the 
combatants, — stalking  into  the  farm  kitchen  afterwards  in  a 
speechless  rage  at  the  cowardly  injustice  which  had  been  done  to 
Tim.  As  he  sat  in  the  big  rocking-chair,  fiercely  cuddling  Tim 
and  sucking  his  thumb,  his  stormy  breath  subsiding  by  degrees, 
Hannah  thought  him,  as  she  confessed  to  the  only  female  friend 
she  possessed  in  the  world,  '  the  pluckiest  and  bonniest  little  grig 
i'  th'  coontry  side.' 

Thenceforward,  so  far  as  her  queer  temper  would  allow,  she 
became  his  nurse  and  slave,  and  David,  with  all  the  memorials  of 
his  own  hard  childhood  about  him,  could  not  believe  his  eyes, 
when  he  found  Sandy  established  day  after  day  in  the  Needham 
Farm  kitchen,  sucking  his  thumb  in  a  corner  of  the  settle,  and 
ordering  Hannah  about  with  the  airs  of  a  three-tailed  bashaw. 
She  stuffed  him  with  hot  girdle-cakes  ;  she  provided  for  him  a 
store  of  'humbugs,'  the  indigenous  sweet  of  the  district,  which 
she  made  and  baked  with  her  own  hands,  and  had  not  made 
before  for  forty  years  ;  she  took  him  about  with  her,  '  rootin,'  as 
she  expressed  it,  after  the  hens  and  pigs  and  the  calves  ;  till, 
Sandy's  exactions  growing  with  her  compliance,  the  common  fate 
of  tyrants  overtook  him.  He  one  day  asked  too  much  and  his 
slave  rebelled.  David  saw  him  come  in  one  afternoon,  and  found 
him  a  minute  or  two  after  viciously  biting  the  blind-cord  in  the 
parlour,  in  a  black  temper.  When  his  father  inquired  what  was 
the  matter,  Sandy  broke  out  in  a  sudden  wail  of  tears. 

'  .Why  can't  she  be  a  Kangawoo  when  I  want  her  to  ? ' 

Whereupon  David,  with  the  picture  of  Hannah's  grim  figure, 
cap  and  all,  before  his  mind's  eye,  went  into  the  first  fit  of  side- 
shaking  laughter  that  had  befallen  him  for  many  and  many  a 
month. 

On  a  certain  gusty  afternoon  towards  the  middle  of  February, 
David  was  standing  alone  beside  the  old  smithy.  The  frost,  after 
a  temporary  thaw,  had  set  in  again,  there  had  been  tolerably 
heavy  snow  the  night  before,  and  it  was  evident  from  the  shifting 
of  the  wind  and  the  look  of  the  clouds  that  were  coming  up  from 
the  north-east  over  the  Scout  that  another  fall  was  impending. 
But  the  day  had  been  fine,  and  the  sun,  setting  over  the  Cheshire 
hills,  threw  a  flood  of  pale  rose  into  the  white  bosom  of  the  Scout 
and  on  the  heavy  clouds  piling  themselves  above  it.  It  was  a 
moment  of  exquisite  beauty  and  wildness.  The  sunlit  snow 
gleamed  against  the  stormy  sky  ;  the  icicles  lining  the  steep 
channel  of  the  Downfall  shone  jagged  and  rough  between  the 
white  and  smoothly  rounded  banks  of  moor,  or  the  snow- wreathed 
shapes  of  the  grit  boulders  ;  to  his  left  was  the  murmur  of  the 


560  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  IT 

Red  Brook  creeping  between  its  frozen  banks  ;  while  close  beside 
him  about  twenty  of  the  moor  sheep  were  huddling  against  the 
southern  wall  of  the  smithy  in  prescience  of  the  coming  storm. 
Almost  within  reach  of  his  stick  was  the  pan  of  his  childish  joy, 
the  water  left  in  it  by  the  December  rains  frozen  hard  and  white; 
and  in  the  crevice  of  the  wall  he  had  just  discovered  the  moulder- 
ing remains  of  a  toy-boat. 

He  stood  and  looked  out  over  the  wide  winter  world,  rejoicing 
in  its  austerity,  its  solemn  beauty.  Physically  he  was  conscious 
of  recovered  health  ;  and  in  the  mind  also  there  was  a  new  energy 
of  life  and  work.  Nature  seemed  to  say  to  him,  '  Do  but  keep 
thy  heart  open  to  me,  and  I  have  a  myriad  aspects  and  moods 
wherewith  to  interest  and  gladden  and  teach  thee  to  the  end  ; ' 
while,  as  his  eye  wandered  to  the  point  where  Manchester  lay 
hidden  on  the  horizon,  the  world  of  men,  of  knowledge,  of  duty, 
summoned  him  back  to  it  with  much  of  the  old  magic  and  power 
in  the  call.  His  grief,  his  love,  no  man  should  take  from  him  ; 
but  he  must  play  his  part. 

Yes — he  and  Sandy  must  go  home — and  soon.  Yet  even  as  he 
so  decided,  the  love  of  the  familiar  scene,  its  freedom,  its  loneli- 
ness, its  unstainedness,  rose  high  within  him.  He  stood  lost  in  a 
trance  of  memory.  Here  he  and  Louie  had  listened  to  'Lias  ; 
there,  far  away  amid  the  boulders  of  the  Downfall,  they  had 
waited  for  the  witch  ;  among  those  snow-laden  bushes  yonder 
Louie  had  hidden  when  she  played  Jenny  Crum  for  the  discom- 
fiture of  the  prayer-meeting ;  and  it  was  on  the  slope  at  his  feet 
that  she  had  pushed  the  butter-scotch  into  his  mouth,  the  one  and 
only  sign  of  affection  she  had  ever  given  him,  that  he  could 
remember,  in  all  their  forlorn  childhood. 

As  these  things  rose  before  him,  the  moor,  the  wind,  the 
rising  voice  of  the  storm  became  to  him  so  many  channels,  whereby 
the  bitter  memory  of  his  sister  rushed  upon  him  and  took  posses- 
sion. Everything  spoke  of  her,  suggested  her.  Then  with 
inexorable  force  his  visualising  gift  carried  him  on  past  her 
childhood  to  the  scenes  of  her  miserable  marriage ;  and  as  he 
thought  of  her  child's  death,  the  desolation  and  madness  of  her 
flight,  the  mystery  of  her  fate,  his  soul  was  flooded  once  more  for 
the  hundredth  time  with  anguish  and  horror.  Here  in  this  place, 
where  their  childish  lives  had  been  so  closely  intertwined,  he 
could  not  resign  himself  for  ever  to  ignorance,  to  silence  ;  his 
whole  being  went  out  in  protest,  in  passionate  remorseful  desire. 

The  wind  was  beginning  to  blow  fiercely  ;  the  rosy  glow  was 
gone  ;  darkness  was  already  falling.  Wild  gusts  swept  from  time 
to  time  round  the  white  amphitheatre  of  moor  and  crag ;  the 
ghostly  sounds  of  night  and  storm  were  on  the  hills.  Suddenly 
it  was  to  him  as  though  he  heard  his  name  called  from  a  great 
distance — breathed  shrilly  and  lingeringly  along  the  face  of  the 
Scout. 

'  David  ! ' 

It  was  Louie's  voice.     The  illusion  was  so  strong  that,  as  he 


CHAP,  xi  MATURITY  561 

raised  his  hand  to  his  ear,  turning  towards  the  Downfall,  whence 
the  sound  seemed  to  come,  he  trembled  from  head  to  foot. 

'  David  ! ' 

"Was  it  the  call  of  some  distant  boy  or  shepherd  ?  He  could 
not  tell,  could  not  collect  himself.  He  sank  down  oh  one  of  the 
grit-boulders  by  the  snow-wreathed  door  of  the  smithy  and  sat 
there  long,  heedless  of  the  storm  and  cold,  his  mind  working,  a 
sudden  purpose  rising  and  unfolding,  with  a  mysterious  rapidity 
and  excitement. 

Early  on  the  following  morning  he  made  his  way  down  through 
the  deep  snow  to  the  station,  having  first  asked  Hannah  to  take 
charge  of  Sandy  for  a  day  or  two  ;  and  by  the  night  mail  he  left 
London  for  Paris. 

It  was  not  till  he  walked  into  Mr.  O'Kelly's  office,  on  the 
ground  floor  of  a  house  in  the  Rue  d'Assas,  at  about  eleven  o'clock 
on  the  next  day,  that  he  was  conscious  of  any  reaction.  Then  for 
a  bewildered  instant  he  wondered  why  he  had  come,  and  what  he 
was  to  say. 

But  to  his  amazement  the  lawyer  rose  at  once,  throwing  up  his 
hands  with  the  gesture  of  one  who  notes  some  singular  and 
unexpected  stroke  of  good  fortune. 

'  This  is  most  extraordinary,  Mr.  Grieve  !  I  have  not  yet 
signed  the  letter  on  my  desk — there  it  is  ! — summoning  you  to 
Paris.  We  have  discovered  Madame  Montjoie  !  As  constantly 
happens,  we  have  been  pursuing  inquiries  in  all  sorts  of  difficult 
and  remote  quarters,  and  she  is  here — at  our  doors,  living  for  some 
weeks  past,  at  any  rate,  without  any  disguise,  at  Barbizon,  of  all 
places  in  the  world !  Barbizon  pres  Fontainebleau.  You  know  it  ? ' 

David  sat  down. 

*  Yes,'  he  said,  after  an  instant.  'I  know  it.  Is  he — is  that 
man  Br6nart  there  ? ' 

'  Certainly.  He  has  taken  a  miserable  studio,  and  is  making, 
or  pretending  to  make,  some  winter  studies  of  the  forest.  I  hear 
that  Madame  Montjoie  looks  ill  and  worn  ;  the  neighbours  say  the 
menage  is  a  very  uncomfortable  one,  and  not  likely  to  last  long. 
I  wish  I  had  better  news  for  you,  Mr.  Grieve. ' 

And  the  lawyer,  remembering  the  handsome  hollow-eyed  boy 
of  twenty  who  had  first  asked  his  help,  studied  with  irrepressible 
curiosity  the  man's  noble  storm-beaten  look  and  fast  grizzling 
hair,  as  David  sat  before  him  with  his  head  bent  and  his  hat  in 
his  hands. 

They  talked  a  while  longer,  and  then  David  said,  rising  : 

'  Can  I  get  over  there  to-night  ?  The  snow  will  be  deep  in  the 
forest.'  . 

'  I  imagine  they  will  keep  that  main  road  to  Barbizon  open  in 
some  fashion,'  said  the  lawyer.  'You  may  find  a  sledge.  Let 
me  know  how  you  speed  and  whether  I  can  assist  you.  But,  I 
fear,' — he  shrugged  his  shoulders — '  in  the  end  this  wild  life  gets 
into  the  blood.  I  have  seen  it  so  often.' 


562  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE         "BOOK  nr 

He  spoke  with  the  freedom  and  knowledge  of  one  who  had 
observed  Louie  Montjoie  with  some  closeness  for  eleven  years. 
David  said  nothing  in  answer  ;  but  at  the  door  he  turned  to  ask  a 
question. 

'  You  can't  tell  me  anything  of  the  habits  of  this  man — this 
BrSnart  ? ' 

'  Stop  ! '  said  the  lawyer,  after  a  moment's  thought ;  '  I 
remember  this  detail — my  agent  told  me  that  M.  Brenart  was 

engaged  in  some  work  for  '  D et  Cie ' — he  named  a  great 

picture-dealing  firm  on  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain,  famous  for 
their  illustrated  books  and  editions  de  luxe. — '  He  did  not  hear 
what  it  was,  but — ah  !  I  remember, — it  has  taken  him  occasion- 
ally to  Paris,  or  so  he  says,  and  it  has  been  these  absences  which 
have  led  to  some  of  the  worst  scenes  between  him  and  your  sister. 
I  suppose  she  put  a  jealous  woman's  interpretation  on  them.  You 
want  to  see  her  alone  ? — when  this  man  is  out  of  the  way  ?  I 
have  an  idea :  take  my  card  and  your  own  to  this  person--—'  he 

wrote  out  an  address — '  he  is  one  of  the  junior  partners  in  "  D 

et  Cie  ;  •'  I  know  him,  and  I  got  his  firm  the  sale  of  a  famous 
picture.  He  will  do  me  a  good  turn.  Ask  him  what  the  work  is 
that  M.  Brenart  is  doing,  and  when  he  expects  him  next  in  Paris. 
It  is  possible  you  may  get  some  useful  information.' 

David  took  the  card  and  walked  at  once  to  the  Boulevard  St. 
Germain,  which  was  close  by.  He  was  civilly  received  by  the 
man  to  whom  O'Kelly  had  sent  him,  and  learned  from  him  that 
Brenart  was  doing  for  the  firm  a  series  of  etchings  illustrating  the 
forest  in  winter,  and  intended  to  make  part  of  a  great  book  on 
Fontainebleau  and  the  Barbizon  school.  They  were  expecting  the 
last  batch  from  him,  were  indeed  desperately  impatient  for  them. 
But  he  was  a  difiicult  fellow  to  deal  with — an  exceedingly  clever 
artist,  but  totally  untrustworthy.  In  his  last  letter  to  them  he 
had  spoken  of  bringing  the  final  instalment  to  them,  and  return- 
ing some  corrected  proofs  by  February  16 — 'to-morrow,  I  see,' 
said  the  speaker,  glancing  at  an  almanac  on  his  office  table. 
'  Well,  we  may  get  them,  and  we  mayn't.  If  we  don't,  we  shall 
have  to  take  strong  measures.  And  now,  Monsieur,  I  think  I 
have  told  you  all  I  can  tell  you  of  our  relations  to  M.  Bre'nart.' 

David  bowed  and  took  his  leave.  He  made  his  way  through 
the  great  shop  with  its  picture-covered  walls  and  its  floors  dotted 
with  stands  on  which  lay  exposed  the  new  etchings  and  engrav- 
ings of  the  season.  In  front  of  him  a  lady  in  black  was  also 
making  her  way  to  the  door  and  the  street.  No  one  was  attending 
her,  and  instinctively  he  hurried  forward  to  open  the  heavy  glass 
door  for  her.  As  he  did  so  a  sudden  sharp  presentiment  shot 
through  him.  The  door  swung  to  behind  them,  and.  he  found 
himself  in  the  covered  entrance  of  the  shop  face  to  face  with  Elise 
Delaunay. 

The  meeting  was  so  startling  that  neither  could  disguise  the 
shock  of  it.  He  took  off  his  hat  mechanically  ;  she  grew  white 
and  leant  against  the  glass  window. 


CHAP,  xi  MATURITY  563 

'  You  ! — how  can  it  be  you  ? '  she  said  in  a  quick  whisper,  then 
recovering  herself — '  Monsieur  Grieve,  old  associations  are  pain- 
ful, and  I  am  neither  strong — nor — nor  stoical.  Which  way  are 
you  walking  ? ' 

'  Towards  the  Rue  de  Seine,'  he  said,  thrown  into,  a  bewilder- 
ing mijt  of  memory  by  her  gesture,  the  crisp  agitated  decision  of 
her  manner.  '  And  you  ? ' 

'  I  also.  We  will  walk  a  hundred  yards  together.  What  are 
you  in  Paris  for  ? ' 

'  I  am  here  on  some  business  of  my  sister's,'  he  said  evasively. 

She  raised  her  eyes,  and  looked  at  him  long  and  sharply.  He, 
on  his  side,  saw,  with  painful  agitation,  that  her  youth  was  gone, 
but  not  her  grace,  not  her  singular  and  wilful  charm.  The  little 
face  under  her  black  hat  was  lined  and  sallow,  and  she  was 
startlingly  thin.  The  mouth  had  lost  its  colour,  and  gained 
instead  the  hard  shrewdness  of  a  woman  left  to  battle  with  the 
world  and  poverty  alone ;  but  the  eyes  had  their  old  plaintive 
trick  ;  the  dead  gold  of  the  hair,  the  rings  and  curls  of  it  against 
the  white  temples,  were  still  as  beautiful  as  they  had  ever  been ; 
and  the  light  form  moved  beside  him  with  the  same  quick  floating 
gait. 

'  You  have  grown  much  older,'  she  said  abruptly.  '  You  look 
as  if  you  had  suffered — but  what  of  that? — C'est  comme  tout  le 
monde."1 

She  withdrew  her  look  a  moment,  with  a  little  bitter  gesture, 
then  she  resumed,  drawn  on  by  a  curiosity  and  emotion  she  could 
not  control. 

'  Are  you  married  ? ' 

'  Yes,  but  my  wife  is  dead.' 

She  gave  a  start ;  the  first  part  of  the  answer  had  not  prepared 
her  for  the  second. 

'  Ah,  mon  Dieu  ! '  she  said,  '  always  grief — always  !  Is  it 
long?' 

'  Eight  months.  I  have  a  boy.  And  you  ? — I  heard  sad  news 
of  you  once — the  only  time.' 

'  You  might  well,'  she  said,  with  a  half -ironical  accent,  driving 
the  point  of  her  umbrella  restlessly  into  the  crevices  of  the  stones, 
as  they  slowly  crossed  a  paved  street.  '  My  husband  is  only  a 
cripple,  confined  to  his  chair, — I  am  no  longer  an  artist  but  an 
artisan, — I  have  not  painted  a  picture  for  years, — but  what  I 
paint  sells  for  a  trifle,  and  there  is  soup  in  the  pot — of  a  sort. 
For  the  rest  I  spend  my  life  in  making  tisane,  in  lifting  weights 
too  heavy  for  me,  and  bargaining  for  things  to  eat.' 

'  But — you  are  not  unhappy  ! '  he  said  to  her  boldly,  with  a 
change  of  tone. 

She  stopped,  struck  by  the  indescribable-  note  in  his  voice. 
They  had  turned  into  a  side  street,  whither  she  had  unconsciously 
led  him.  She  stood  with  her  eyes  on  the  ground,  then  she  lifted 
them  once  more,  and  there  was  in  them  a  faint  beautiful  gleam, 
which  transformed  the  withered  and  sharpened  face. 


564  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOO*  rv 

'You  are  quite  right,'  she  said,  'if  he  will  only  live.  He 
depends  on  me  for  everything.  It  is  like  a  child,  but  it  consoles. 
Adieu  I ' 

That  night  David  found  himself  in  the  little  auberge  at  Bar- 
bizon. He  had  discovered  a  sledge  to  take  him  across  the  forest, 
and  he  and  his  driver  had  pushed  their  way  under  a  sky  of  lead 
and  through  whirling  clouds  of  fresh  sleet  past  the  central  beech- 
wood,  where  the  great  boles  stood  straight  and  bare  amid  fantastic 
masses  of  drift ;  through  the  rock  and  fir  region,  where  all  was 
white,  and  the  trees  drooped  under  their  wintry  load  ;  and 
beneath  withered  and  leaning  oaks,  throwing  gaunt  limbs  here 
and  there  from  out  the  softening  effacing  mantle  of  the  snow. 
Night  fell  when  the  journey  was  half  over,  and  as  the  lights  of 
the  sledge  flashed  from  side  to  side  into  these  lonely  fastnesses  of 
cold,  how  was  it  possible  to  believe  that  summer  and  joy  had  ever 
tabernacled  here  ? 

He  was  received  at  the  inn,  as  his  driver  had  brought  him — 
with  astonishment.  But  Barbizon  has  been  long  accustomed, 
beyond  most  places  in  France,  to  the  eccentricities  of  the  English 
and  American  visitor;  and  being  a  home  of  artists,  it  understands 
the  hunt  for  '  impressions,'  and  easily  puts  up  with  the  unex- 
pected. Before  a  couple  of  hours  were  over,  David  was  installed 
in  a  freezing  room,  and  was  being  discussed  in  the  kitchen,  where 
his  arrival  produced  a  certain  animation,  as  the  usual  English 
madman  in  quest  of  a  sensation,  and  no  doubt  ready  to  pay  for  it. 

There  were,  however,  three  other  guests  in  the  inn,  as  he 
found,  when  he  descended  for  dinner.  They  were  all  artists — 
young,  noisy,  bons  camarades,  and  of  a  rough  and  humble  social 
type.  To  them  the  winter  at  Barbizon  was  as  attractive  as  any- 
where else.  Life  at  the  inn  was  cheap,  and  free ;  they  had  the 
digestion  of  ostriches,  eating  anything  that  was  put  before  them, 
and  drinking  oceans  of  red  wine  at  ten  sous  a  litre  ;  on  bad 
days  they  smoked,  fed,  worked  at  their  pictures  or  played  coarse 
practical  jokes  on  each  other  and  the  people  of  the  inn  ;  in  fine 
weather  there  was  always  the  forest  to  be  exploited,  and  the 
chance  of  some  happy  and  profitable  inspiration. 

They  stared  at  David  a  good  deal  during  the  biftek,  the  black 
pudding  which  seemed  to  be  a  staple  dish  of  the  establishment. 
and  the  omelette  aux  fines  herbes,  which  the  landlord's  wife  had 
added  in  honour  of  the  stranger.  One  of  them,  behind  the 
shelter  of  his  glasses,  drew  the  outline  of  the  Englishman's  head 
and  face  on  the  table-cloth,  and  showed  it  to  his  neighbour. 

'  Poetical,  grand  style,  Jiein  ?  ' 

The  other  nodded  carelessly.  l  Pourtant — I'hiver  lui  plait,1* 
he  hummed  under  his  breath,  having  some  lines  of  Hugo's,  which 
he  had  chosen  as  a  motto  for  a  picture,  running  in  his  head. 

After  dinner  everybody  gathered  round  the  great  fire,  which 
the  servant  had  piled  with  logs,  while  the  flames,  and  the  wreaths 
of  smoke  from  the  four  pipes  alternately  revealed  and  concealed 


CHAP,  xi  MATURITY  565 

the  rough  sketches  of  all  sorts — landscape,  portrait,  genre — 
legacies  of  bygone  visitors,  wherewith  the  walls  of  the  salle  & 
manger  were  covered.  David  sat  in  his  corner  smoking,  ready 
enough  to  give  an  account  of  his  journey  across  the  forest,  and  to 
speak  when  he  was  spoken  to. 

As  soon  as  the  strangeness  of  the  new-comer  had  a  little  worn 
off,  the  three  young  fellows  plunged  into  a  flood  of  amusing 
gossip  about  the  storm  and  the  blocking  of  the  roads,  the  scarcity 
of  food  in  Barbizon,  the  place  in  general,  and  its  inhabitants. 
David  fell  silent  after  a  while,  stiffening  under  a  presentiment 
which  was  soon  realised.  He  heard  his  sister's  wretched  lot  dis- 
cussed with  shouts  of  laughter — the  chances  of  Bre"nart's  escape 
from  the  mistress  he  had  already  wearied  of  and  deceived — the 
perils  of  '  la  Montjoie's '  jealousy.  '  II  veut  bien  se  debarrasser 
d'elle — mats  on  ne  plaisante  pas  avec  une  tigresse  ! '  said  one  of 
the  speakers.  So  long  as  there  was  information  to  be  got  which 
might  serve  him  he  sat  motionless,  withdrawn  into  the  dark, 
forcing  himself  to  listen.  When  the  talk  became  mere  scurrility 
and  noise,  he  rose  and  went  out. 

He  passed  through  the  courtyard  of  the  inn,  and  turned  down 
the  village  street.  The  storm  had  gone  down,  and  there  were  a 
few  stars  amid  the  breaking  clouds.  Here  and  there  a  light 
shone  from  the  low  houses  on  either  hand ;  the  snow,  roughly 
shovelled  from  the  foot  pavements,  lay  piled  in  heaps  along  the 
roadway,  the  white  roofs  shone  dimly  against  the  wild  sky.  He 
passed  Madame  Pyat's  maisonnette,  pausing  a  moment  to  look 
over  the  wall.  Not  a  sign  of  life  in  the  dark  building,  and, 
between  him  and  it,  great  drifts  of  snow  choking  up  and  burying 
the  garden.  A  little  further  on,  as  he  knew,  lay  the  goal  of  his 
quest.  He  easily  made  out  the  house  from  Mr.  O'Kelly's  descrip- 
tions, and  he  lingered  a  minute,  on  the  footway,  under  an  over- 
hanging roof  to  look  at  it.  It  was  just  a  labourer's  cottage 
standing  back  a  little  from  the  street,  and  to  one  side  rose  a  high 
wooden  addition  which  he  guessed  to  be  the  studio.  Through  the 
torn  blind  came  the  light  of  a  lamp,  and  as  he  stood  there,  him- 
self invisible  in  his  patch  of  darkness,  he  heard  voices — an  alter- 
cation, a  woman's  high  shrill  note. 

Then  he  crept  back  to  the  inn  vibrating  through  all  his  being 
to  the  shame  of  those  young  fellows'  talk,  the  incredible  difficulty 
of  the  whole  enterprise.  Could  he  possibly  make  any  impression 
upon  her  whatever  ?  What  was  done  was  done  ;  and  it  would  be 
a  crime  on  his  part  to  jeopardise  in  the  smallest  degree  the  whole- 
some brightness  of  Sandy's  childhood  by  any  rash  proposals  which 
it  might  be  wholly  beyond  his  power  to  carry  out. 

He  carried  up  a  basket  of  logs  to  his  room,  made  them  blaze, 
and  crouched  over  them  till  far  into  the  night.  But  in  the  end 
the  doubt  and  trouble  of  his  mind  subsided ;  his  purpose  grew 
clear  again.  '  It  was  my  own  voice  that  spoke  to  me  on  the  moor,' 
he  thought,  '  the  voice  of  my  own  best  life.' 

About  eight  o'clock,  with  the  first  light  of  the  morning,  he  was 


566  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

roused  by  bustle  and  noise  under  his  window.  He  got  up,  and, 
looking  out,  saw  two  sledges  standing  before  the  inn,  in  the  cold 
grey  light.  Men  were  busy  harnessing  a  couple  of  horses  to  each, 
and  there  were  a  few  figures,  muffled  in  great  coats  and  carrying 
bags  and  wraps,  standing  about. 

'They  are  going  over  to  Fontainebleau  station,' he  thought ; 
'  if  that  man  keeps  his  appointment  in  Paris  to-day,  he  will  go 
with  them.' 

As  the  words  passed  through  his  mind,  a  figure  came  striding 
up  from  the  lower  end  of  the  street,  a  young  fair-haired  man,  in 
a  heavy  coat  lined  with  sheepskin.  His  delicately  made  face — 
naturally  merry  and  bon  enfant — was  flushed  and  scowling.  He 
climbed  into  one  of  the  sledges,  complained  of  the  lateness  of  the 
start,  swore  at  the  ostler,  who  made  him  take  another  seat  on  the 
plea  that  the  one  he  had  chosen  was  engaged,  and  finally  subsided 
into  a  moody  silence,  pulling  at  his  moustache,  and  staring  out 
over  the  snow,  till  at  last  the  signal  was  given,  and  the  sledges 
flew  off  on  the  Fontainebleau  road,  under  a  shower  of  snowballs 
which  a  group  of  shivering  bright-eyed  urchins  on  their  way  to 
school  threw  after  them,  as  soon  as  the  great  whips  were  at  a  safe 
distance. 

David  dressed  and  descended. 

'  Who  was  that  fair-haired  gentleman  in  the  first  sledge  ? '  he 
casually  asked  of  the  landlord  who  was  bringing  some  smoking 
hot  coffee  into  the  salle  &  manger. 

'That  was  a  M.  Brenart,  monsieur,'  said  the  landlord,  cheer- 
fully, absorbed  all  the  while  in  the  laying  of  his  table.  '  (Test  un 
drdle  de  corps,  M.  Brtnart.  I  don't  take  to  him  much  myself ; 
and  as  for  madame — qui  n'est  pas  madame  ! ' 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders,  saw  that  there  were  no  fresh  rolls, 
and  departed  with  concern  to  fetch  them. 

David  ate  and  drank.     He  would  give  her  an  hour  yet. 

When  his  watch  told  him  that  the  time  was  come,  he  went  out 
slowly,  inquiring  on  the  way  if  there  would  be  any  means  of 
getting  to  Paris  later  in  the  day.  Yes,  the  landlord  thought  a 
conveyance  of  some  sort  could  be  managed — if  monsieur  would 
pay  for  it ! 

A  few  minutes  later  David  knocked  at  the  door  of  Bre"nart 's 
house.  He  could  get  no  answer  at  all,  and  at  last  he  tried  the 
latch.  It  yielded  to  his  hand,  and  he  went  in. 

There  was  no  one  in  the  bare  kitchen,  but  there  were  the 
remains  of  a  fire,  and  of  a  meal.  Both  the  crockery  on  the  table 
and  a  few  rough  chairs  and  stools  the  room  contained  struck  him 
as  being  in  great  disorder.  There  were  two  doors  at  the  back. 
One  led  into  a  back  room  which  was  empty,  the  other  down  a  few 
steps  into  a  garden.  He  descended  the  steps  and  saw  the  long 
wooden  erection  of  the  studio  stretching  to  his  left.  There  was  a 
door  in  the  centre  of  its  principal  wall,  which  was  ajar.  He  went 
up  to  it  and  softly  pushed  it  open.  There,  at  the  further  end, 


CHAP,  xi  MATURITY  567 

huddled  over  an  iron  stove,  her  face  buried  in  her  hands,  her 
shoulders  shaken  with  fierce  sobs,  was  Louie. 

He  closed  the  door  behind  him,  and  at  the  sound  she  turned, 
hastily.  When  she  saw  who  it  was  she  gave  a  cry,,  and,  sinking 
back  on  her  low  canvas  chair,  she  lay  staring  at  him,  and  speech- 
less. Her  eyes  were  red  with  weeping  ;  her  beauty  was  a  wreck  ; 
and  in  face  of  the  despair  which  breathed  from  her,  and  from  her 
miserable  surroundings,  all  doubt,  all  repulsion,  all  condem- 
nation fled  from  the  brother's  heart.  The  iron  in  his  soul  melted. 
He  ran  up  to  her,  and,  kneeling  beside  her,  he  put  his  arms  round 
her,  as  he  had  never  done  in  his  life. 

'  Oh  you  poor  thing — you  poor  thing  ! '  he  cried,  scarcely 
knowing  what  he  said.  'He  took  her  worn,  tear-stained  face, 
and,  laying  it  on  his  shoulder,  he  kissed  her,  breathing  inco- 
herent words  of  pity  and  consolation. 

She  submitted  a  while,  helpless  with  shock  and  amazement, 
and  still  shaken  with  the  tempest  of  her  own  passion.  But  there 
came  a  moment  when  she  pushed  him  away  and  tried  desperately 
to  recover  herself. 

'  I  don't  know  what  you  want — you're  not  going  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  me  now — you  can't.  Let  me  alone — it  will  be 
over  soon — one  way  or  the  other.' 

And  she  sat  upright,  one  hand  clenched  on  her  knees,  her 
frowning  brows  drawn  together,  and  the  tears  falling  in  spite  of 
her  intense  effort  to  drive  them  back. 

He  found  a  painter's  stool,  and  sat  down  by  her,  pale  and 
determined.  He  told  her  the  history  of  his  search  ;  he  implored 
her  to  be  guided  by  him,  to  let  him  take  her  home  to  England 
and  Manchester,  where  her  story  was  unknown,  save  to  Dora 
and  John.  He  would  make  a  home  for  her  near  his  own  ;  he 
would  try  to  comfort  her  for  the  loss  of  her  child  ;  they  would 
understand  each  other  better,  and  the  past  should  be  buried. 

Louie  looked  at  him  askance.  Every  now  and  then  she  ceased 
to  listen  to  him  at  all ;  while,  under  the  kindling  of  her  own 
thoughts,  her  wild  eyes  flamed  into  fresh  rage  and  agony. 

'  Don't  ! — leave  me  alone  ! '  she  broke  out  at  last,  springing 
up.  '  I  don't  want  your  help,  I  don't  want  you  ;  I  only  want 
him, — and  I  will  have  him,  or  we  shall  kill  each  other.' 

She  paced  to  and  fro,  her  hands  clasped  on  her  breast,  her 
white 'face  setting  into  a  ghastly  calm.  David  gazed  at  her  with 
horror.  This  was  another  note  !  one  which  in  all  their  experi- 
ence of  each  other  he  had  never  heard  on  her  lips  before.  She 
loved  this  man  ! — this  mean  wretch,  who  had  lived  upon  her  and 
betrayed  her,  and,  having  got  from  her  all  she  had  to  give,  was 
probably  just  about  to  cast  her  off  into  the  abyss  which  yawns 
for  such  women  as  Louie.  He  had  thought  of  her  flight  to  him 
before  as  the  frenzy  of  a  nature  which  must  have  distraction  at 
any  cost  from  the  unfamiliar  and  intolerable  weight  of  natural  grief. 

But  this ! — one  moment  it  cut  the  roots  from  hope,  the  next 
it  nerved  him  to  more  vigorous  action. 


568  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE          BOOK  iv 

'  You  cannot  have  him,'  he  said,  steadily  and  sternly.  '  I  have 
listened  to  the  talk  here  for  your  sake — he  is  already  on  the 
point  of  deserting  you — everyone  else  in  this  place  knows  that  he 
is  tired  of  you — that  he  is  unfaithful  to  you.' 

She  dropped  into  her  chair  with  a  groan.  Even  her  energies 
were  spent— she  was  all  but  fainting — and  her  miserable  heart 
knew,  with  more  certainty  than  David  himself  did,  that  all  he 
said  was  true. 

Her  unexpected  weakness,  the  collapse  of  her  strained  nerves, 
filled  him  with  fresh  hopes.  He  came  close  to  her  again  and 
pleaded,  by  the  memory  of  her  child,  of  their  father — that  she 
would  yield,  and  go  away  with  him  at  once. 

'  What  should  I  do ' — she  broke  in-  passionately,  her  sense  of 
opposition  of  absurdity  reviving  her,  '  when  I  get  to  your  hateful 
Manchester  ?  Go  to  church  and  say  my  prayers  I  And  you  ? 
In  a  week  or  two,  I  tell  you,  you  would  be  sick  of  having  soiled 
your  hands  with  such  mud  as  I  am.' 

She  threw  herself  back  in  her  chair  with  a  superb  gesture, 
and  folded  her  arms,  looking  him  defiance. 

'  Try  me,'  he  said  quietly,  while  his  lip  trembled.  '  I  am  not 
as  I  was,  Louie.  There  are  things  one  can  only  learn  by  going 
down — down — into  the  depths — of  sorrow.  The  night  before 
Lucy  died — she  could  hardly  speak — she  sent  you  a  message  :  "  I 
wish  I  had  been  kinder — ask  her  to  come  to  Manchester  when  I 
am  gone."  I  have  not  seen  her  die — not  seen  her  whole  life  turn 
to  love — through  such  unspeakable  suffering — for  nothing.  Oh 
Louie — when  we  submit  ourselves  to  God — when  we  ask  for  His 
life — and  give  up  our  own — then,  and  then  only,  there  is  peace — 
and  strength.  We  ourselves  are  nothing — creatures  of  passion — 
miserable — weak — but  in  Him  and  through  Him — ' 

His  voice  broke.  He  took  her  cold  hand  and  pressed  it 
tenderly.  She  trembled  in  spite  of  herself,  and  closed  her  eyes. 

'•Don't — I  know  all  about  that — why  did  the  child  die? 
There  is  no  God — nothing.  It's  just  talk.  I  told  Him  what  I'd 
do — I  vowed  I'd  go  to  the  bad,  for  good  and  all — and  I  have. 
There — let  me  alone  ! ' 

But  he  only  held  her  hand  tighter. 

'  No  ! — never  !  Your  trouble  was  awful — it  might  well  drive 
you  mad.  But  others  have  suffered,  Louie — no  less — and  yet 
have  believed — have  hoped.  It  is  not  beyond  our  power — for  it 
has  been  done  again  and  again  ! — by  the  most  weak,  the  most 
miserable.  Oh  !  think  of  that — tear  yourself  first  from  the  evil 
life — and  you,  too,  will  know  what  it  is  to  be  consoled — to  be 
strengthened.  The  mere  effort  to  come  with  me — I  promise  it 
you  ! — will  bring  you  healing  and  comfort.  We  make  for  our- 
selves the  promise  of  eternal  life,  by  turning  to  the  good.  Then 
the  hope  of  recovering  our  dear  ones — which  was  nothing  to  us 
before — rises  and  roots  itself  in  our  heart.  Come  with  me, — 
conquer  yourself, — let  us  begin  to  love  each  other  truly,  give 
me  comfort  and  yourself — and  you  will  bear  to  think  again  of 


CHAP.  xi.  MATUEITY  569 

C6cile  and  of  God — there  will  be  calm  and  peace  beyond  this 
pain.' 

His  eyes  shone  upon  her  through  a  mist.  She  said  no  more 
for  a  while.  She  lay  exhausted  and  silent,  the  tears  streaming 
once  more  down  her  haggard  cheeks. 

Then,  thinking  she  had  consented,  he  began  to  speak  of 
arrangements  for  the  journey — of  the  possibility  of  getting  across 
the  forest. 

Instantly  her  passion  returned.  She  sprang  up  and  put  him 
away  from  her. 

4  It  is  ridiculous,  I  tell  you — ridiculous  !  How  can  I  decide 
in  such  an  instant?  You  must  go  away  and  leave  me  to  think.' 

'No,'  he  said  firmly,  4my  only  chance  is  to  stay  with 
you.' 

She  walked  up  and  down,  saying  wild  incoherent  things  to 
herself  under  her  breath.  She  wore  the  red  dress  she  had  worn 
at  Manchester — now  a  torn  and  shabby  rag — and  over  it,  because 
of  the  cold,  a  long  black  cloak,  a  relic  of  better  days.  Her 
splendid  hair,  uncombed  and  dishevelled,  hung  almost  loose 
round  her  head  and  neck;  and  the  emaciation  of  face  and  figure 
made  her  height  and  slenderness  more  abnormal  than  ever  as 
she  swept  tempestuously  to  and  fro. 

At  last  she  paused  in  front  of  him. 

'Well,  I  dare  say  I'll  go  with  you,'  she  said,  with  the  old 
reckless  note.  '  That  fiend  thinks  he  has  me  in  his  power  for 
good,  he  amuses  himself  with  threats  of  leaving  me — perhaps  I'll 
turn  the  tables.  .  .  .  But  you  must  go — go  for  an  hour.  You 
can  find  out  about  a  carriage.  There  will  be  an  old  woman  here 
presently  for  the  house-work.  I'll  get  her  to  help  me  pack. 
You'll  only  be  in  the  way.' 

'  You'll  be  ready  for  me  in  an  hour  ? '  he  said,  rising  reluc- 
tantly. 

4  Well,  it  don't  look,  does  it,  as  if  there  was  much  to  pack  in 
this  hole  ! '  she  said  with  one  of  her  wild  laughs. 

He  looked  round  for  the  first  time  and  saw  a  long  bare  studio, 
containing  a  table  covered  with  etcher's  apparatus  and  some 
blocks  for  wood  engraving.  There  was  besides  an  easel,  and  a 
picture  upon  it,  with  a  pretentious  historical  subject  just  blocked 
in,  a  tall  oak  chair  and  stool  of  antique  pattern,  and  in  one  cor- 
ner a  stand  of  miscellaneous  arms  such  as  many  artists  affect — 
an  old  flintlock  gun  or  two,  some  Moorish  or  Spanish  rapiers  and 
daggers.  The  north  window  was  half  blocked  by  snow,  and  the 
atmosphere  of  the  place,  in  spite  of  the  stove,  was  freezing. 

He  moved  to  the  door,  loth,  most  loth,  to  go,  yet  well  aware, 
by  long  experience,  of  the  danger  of  crossing  her  temper  or  her 
whims.  After  all,  it  would  take  him  some  time  to  make  his 
arrangements  with  the  landlord,  and  he  would  be  back  to  the 
moment. 

She  watched  him  intently  with  her  poor  red  eyes.  She  her- 
self opened  the  door  for  him,  and  to  his  amazement  put  a  sudden 


570  THE  HISTORY  OF  DAVID  GRIEVE 

hand  on  his  arm,  and  kissed  him — roughly,  vehemently,  with 
lips  that  burnt. 

'  Oh,  you  fool ! '  she  said,  '  you  fool ! ' 

'  What  do  you  mean  ? '  he  said,  stopping.  '  I  believe  I  am  a 
fool,  Louie,  to  leave  you  for  a  moment.' 

'  Nonsense  !  You  are  a  fool  to  want  to  take  me  to  Manchester, 
and  I  am  a  fool  to  think  of  going.  There  : — if  I  had  never  been 
born  ! — oh  !  go,  for  God's  sake,  go  !  and  come  back  in  an  hour. 
I  must  have  some  time,  I  tell  you — '  and  she  gave  a  passionate 
stamp — '  to  think  a  bit,  and  put  my  things  together.' 

She  pushed  him  out,  and  shut  the  door.  With  a  great  effort 
he  mastered  himself  and  went. 

He  made  all  arrangements  for  the  two-horse  sledge  that  was 
to  take  them  to  Fontainebleau.  He  called  for  his  bill,  and  paid 
it.  Then  he  hung  about  the  entrance  to  the  forest,  looking  with 
an  unseeing  eye  at  the  tricks  which  the  snow  had  been  playing 
with  the  trees,  at  the  gleams  which  a  pale  and  struggling  sun 
was  shedding  over  the  white  world — till  his  watch  told  him  it 
was  time. 

He  walked  briskly  back  to  the  cottage,  opened  the  outer 
door,  was  astonished  to  hear  neither  voice  nor  movement,  to  see 
nothing  of  the  charwoman  Louie  had  spoken  of — rushed  to  the 
studio  and  entered. 

She  sat  in  the  tall  chair,  her  hands  dropping  over  the  arms, 
her  head  hanging  forward.  The  cold  snow-light  shone  on  her 
open  and  glazing  eyes — on  the  red  and  black  of  her  dress,  on 
the  life-stream  dripping  among  the  folds,  on  the  sharp  curved 
Algerian  dagger  at  her  feet.  She  was  quite  dead.  Even  in  the 
midst  of  his  words  of  hope,  the  thought  of  self-destruction — of 
her  mother — had  come  upon  her  and  absorbed  her.  That  capa- 
city for  sudden  intolerable  despair  which  she  had  inherited,  rose 
to  its  full  height  when  she  had  driven  David  from  her — guided 
her  mad  steps,  her  unshrinking  hand. 

He  knelt  by  her — called  for  help,  laid  his  ear  to  her  heart, 
her  lips.  Then  the  awfulness  of  the  shock,  and  of  his  self- 
reproach,  the  crumbling  of  all  his  hopes,  became  too  much  to  bear. 
Consciousness  left  him,  and  when  the  woman  of  whom  Louie 
had  spoken  did  actually  come  in,  a  few  minutes  later,  she  found 
the  brother  lying  against  the  sister's  knee,  his  arms  outstretched 
across  her,  while  the  dead  Louie,  with  fixed  and  frowning  brows, 
sat  staring  beyond  him  into  eternity — a  figure  of  wild  fate — freed 
at  last  and  for  ever  from  that  fierce  burden  of  herself. 


EPILOGUE 


Alas  !—Alas  i 

— But  to  part  fi-om  David  Grieve  under  the  impression  of  this 
scene  of  wreck  and  moral  defeat  would  be  to  misread  and  mis- 
judge a  life,  destined,  notwithstanding  the  stress  of  exceptional 
suffering  it  was  called  upon  at  one  time  to  pass  through,  to  sin- 
gularly rich  and  fruitful  issues.  Time,  kind  inevitable  Time, 
dulled  the  paralysing  horror  of  his  sister's  death,  and  softened 
the  memory  of  all  that  long  torture  of  publicity,  legal  investiga- 
tion, and  the  like,  which  had  followed  it.  The  natural  healing 
'in  widest  commonalty  spread,'  which  flows  from  affection, 
nature,  and  the  direction  of  the  mind  to  high  and  liberating 
aims,  came  to  him  also  as  the  months  and  years  passed.  His 
wife's  death,  his  sister's  tragedy,  left  indeed  indelible  marks ; 
but,  though  scarred  and  changed,  he  was  in  the  end  neither 
crippled  nor  unhappy.  The  moral  experience  of  life  had  built  up 
in  him  a  faith  which  endured,  and  the  pangs  of  his  own  pity  did 
but  bring  him  at  last  to  rest  the  more  surely  on  a  pity  beyond 
man's.  During  the  nights  of  semi-delirium  which  followed  the 
scene  at  Barbizon,  John,  who  watched  him,  heard  him  repeat 
again  and  again  words  which  seemed  to  have  a  talismanic  power 
over  his  restlessness.  '  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee.  Come,  and 
sin  no  more.'  They  were  fragments  dropped  from  what  was 
clearly  a  nightmare  of  anguish  and  struggle  ;  but  they  testified 
to  a  set  of  character,  they  threw  light  on  the  hopes  and  convic- 
tions which  ultimately  repossessed  themselves  of  the  sound  man. 

Two  years  passed.  It  was  Christmas  Eve.  The  firm  of 
Grieve  &  Co.  in  Prince's  Street  was  shut  for  the  holiday,  and 
David  Grieve,  a  mile  or  two  away,  was  sitting  over  his  study  fire 
with  a  book.  He  closed  it  presently,  and  sat  thinking. 

There  was  a  knock  at  his  door.  When  he  opened  it  he  found 
Dora  outside.  It  was  Dora,  in  the  quasi-sister's  garb  she  had 
assumed  of  late — serge  skirt,  long  black  cloak,  and  bonnet  tied 
with  white  muslin  strings  under  the  throat.  In  her  parish  visit- 
ing among  the  worst  slums  of  An  coats,  she  had  found  such  a 
dress  useful. 

'  I  brought  Sandy's  present,'  she  said,  looking  round  her  cau- 
tiously. '  Is  his  stocking  hung  up  ? ' 

'  No  !  or  the  rascal  would  never  go  to  sleep  to-night.  He  is 
nearly  wild  about  his  presents  as  it  is.  Give  it  to  me.  It  shall 
go  into  my  drawer,  and  I  will  arrange  everything  when  I  go  to 
bed  to-night.' 

He  looked  at  the  puzzle-map  she  had  brought  with  a  childish 


574  THE   HISTORY   OP   DAVID   GRIEVE 

pleasure,  and  between  them  they  locked  it  away  carefully  in  a 
drawer  of  the  writing-table. 

'  Do  sit  down  and  get  warm,'  he  said  to  her,  pushing  forward 
a  chair. 

'  Oh  no  !  I  must  go  back  to  the  church.  We  shall  be  deco- 
rating till  late  to-night.  But  I  had  to  be  in  Broughton,  so  I 
brought  this  on  my  way  home.' 

Then  Sandy  and  I  will  escort  you,  if  you  will  have  us.  He 
made  me  promise  to  take  him  to  see  the  shops.  I  suppose 
Market  Street  is  a  sight.' 

He  went  outside  to  shout  to  Sandy,  who  was  having  his  tea, 
to  get  ready,  and  then  came  back  to  Dora.  She  was  standing  by 
the  fire  looking  at  an  engagement  tablet  filled  with  entries,  on 
the  mantelpiece. 

'  Father  Russell  says  they  have  been  asking  you  again  to  stand 
for  Parliament,'  she  said  timidly,  as  he  came  in. 

'  Yes,  there  is  a  sudden  vacancy.     Old  Jacob  Cherritt  is  dead.' 

'  And  you  won't  ? ' 

He  shook  his  head. 

'No,'  he  said,  after  a  pause.  'lam  not  their  man;  they 
would  be  altogether  disappointed  in  me.' 

She  understood  the  sad  reverie  of  the  face,  and  said  no  more. 

No.  For  new  friends,  new  surroundings,  efforts  of  another 
type,  his  power  was  now  irrevocably  gone  ;  he  shrank  more  than 
ever  from  the  egotisms  of  competition.  But  within  the  old  lines 
he  had  recovered  an  abundant  energy.  Among  his  workmen  ; 
amid  the  details  now  fortunate,  now  untoward  of  his  labours  for 
the  solution  of  certain  problems  of  industrial  ethics ;  in  the 
working  of  the  remarkable  pamphlet  scheme  dealing  with  social 
and  religious  fact,  which  was  fast  making  his  name  famous  in 
the  ears  of  the  England  which  thinks  and  labours ;  and  in  the 
self-devoted  help  of  the  unhappy, — he  was  developing  more  and 
more  the  idealist's  qualities,  and  here  and  there — inevitably — the 
idealist's  mistakes.  His  face,  as  middle  life  was  beginning  to 
shape  it — with  its  subtle  and  sensitive  beauty — was  at  once  the 
index  of  his  strength  and  his  limitations. 

He  and  Dora  stood  talking  a  while  about  certain  public 
schemes  that  were  in  progress  for  the  bettering  of  Ancoats. 
Then  he  said  with  sudden  emphasis  : 

'  Ah  !  if  one  could  but  jump  a  hundred  years  and  see  what 
England  will  be  like !  But  these  northern  towns,  and  this 
northern  life,  on  the  whole  fill  one  with  hope.  There  is  a  strong 
social  spirit  and  strong  individualities  to  work  on.' 

Dora  was  silent.  From  her  Churchwoman's  point  of  view 
the  prospect  was  not  so  bright. 

'  Well,  people  seem  to  think  that  co-operation  is  going  to  do 
everything,'  she  said  vaguely. 

'We  all  cry  our  own  nostrums,'  he  said,  laughing;  'what 
co-operation  has  done  up  here  in  the  north  is  wonderful !  It  has 
been  the  making,  of  thousands.  But  the  world  is  not  going  to 


EPILOGUE  575 

give  itself  over  wholly  to  committees.  There  will  be  room 
enough  for  the  one-man-power  at  any  rate  for  generations  to 
come.  "What  we  want  is  leaders  ;  but  leaders  who  will  feel  them- 
selves "members  of  one  body,"  instruments  of  one  social  order.' 

They  stood  together  a  minute  in  silence  ;  then  he  went  out  to 
the  stairs  and  called  :  '  Sandy,  you  monkey,  come  ajong  ! ' 

Sandy  came  shouting  and  leaping  downstairs,  as  lithe  and 
handsome  as  ever,  and  as  much  of  a  compound  of  the  elf  and  the 
philosopher. 

'  I  know  Auntie  Dora's  brought  me  a  present,'  he  said,  look- 
ing up  into  her  face, — '  but  father's  locked  it  up  ! ' 

David  chased  him  out  of  doors  with  contumely,  and  they  all 
took  the  tram  to  Victoria  Street. 

Once  there,  Sandy  was  in  the  seventh  heaven.  The  shops 
were  ablaze  with  lights,  and  gay  with  every  Christmas  joy  ;  the 
pavements  were  crowded  with  a  buying  and  gaping  throng.  He 
pulled  at  his  father's  hand,  exclaiming  here  and  pointing  there, 
till  David,  dragged  hither  and  thither,  had  caught  some  of  the 
boy's  mirth  and  pleasure. 

But  Dora  walked  apart.  Her  heart  was  a  little  heavy  and 
dull,  her  face  weary.  In  reality,  though  David's  deep  and  tender 
gratitude  and  friendship  towards  her  could  not  express  them- 
selves too  richly,  she  felt,  as  the  years  went  on,  more  and  more 
divided  from  him  and  Sandy.  She  was  horrified  at  the  things 
which  David  published,  or  said  in  public  ;  she  had  long  dropped 
any  talk  with  the  child  on  all  those  subjects  which  she  cared  for 
most.  Young  as  he  was,  the  boy  showed  a  marvellous  under- 
standing in  some  ways  of  his  father's  mind,  and  there  were 
moments  when  she  felt  a  strange  and  dumb  irritation  towards 
them  both. 

Christmas  too,  in  spite  of  her  Christian  fervour,  had  always 
its  sadness  for  her.  It  reminded  her  of  her  father,  and  of  the 
loneliness  of  her  personal  life. 

'  How  father  would  have  liked  all  this  crowd  ! '  she  said  once 
to  David  as  they  passed  into  Market  Street. 

David  assented  with  instant  sympathy,  and  they  talked  a 
little  of  the  vanished  wanderer  as  they  walked  along,  she  with  a 
yearning  passion  which  touched  him  profoundly. 

He  and  Sandy  escorted  her  up  the  Ancoats  High  Street,  and 
at  last  they  turned  into  her  own  road.  Instantly  Dora  perceived 
a  little  crowd  round  her  door,  and,  as  soon  as  she  was  seen,  a 
waving  of  hands,  and  a  Babel  of  voices. 

'  What  is  it  ? '  she  cried,  paling,  and  began  to  run. 

David  and  Sandy  followed.  She  had  already  flown  upstairs  ; 
but  the  shawled  mill-girls,  round  the  door,  flushed  with  excite- 
ment, shouted  their  news  into  his  ear. 

'  It's  her  feyther,  sir,  as  ha  coom  back  after  aw  these  years — 
an  he's  sittin  by  the  fire  quite  nat'ral  like,  Mary  Styles  says — and 
they  put  him  in  a  mad-house  in  furrin  parts,  they  did — an  his 
hair's  quite  white— an  oh  !  sir,  yo  mun  just  goo  up  an  look.' 


576  THE   HISTORY   OP  DAVID   GRIEVE 

Pushed  by  eager  hands,  and  still  holding  Sandy,  David, 
though  half  unwilling,  climbed  the  narrow  stairs. 

The  door  was  half  open.  And  there,  in  his  old  chair,  sat 
Daddy,  his  snow-white  hair  falling  on  his  shoulders,  a  childish 
excitement  and  delight  on  his  blanched  face.  Dora  was  kneeling 
at  his  feet,  her  head  on  his  knees,  sobbing. 

David  took  Sandy  up  in  his  arms. 

'  Be  quiet,  Sandy  ;  don't  say  a  word.' 

And  he  carried  him  downstairs  again,  and  into  the  midst  of 
the  eager  crowd. 

4 1  think,'  he  said,  addressing  them,  '  I  would  go  home  if  I 
were  you — if  you  love  her.' 

They  looked  at  his  shining  eyes  and  twitching  lips,  and 
understood. 

'  Aye,  sir,  aye,  sir,  yo're  abeawt  reet — we'st  not  trouble  her, 
sir.' 

He  carried  his  boy  home,  Sandy  raining  questions  in  a  tumult 
of  excitement.  Then  when  the  child  was  put  to  bed  he  sat  on  in 
his  lonely  study,  stirred  to  his  sensitive  depths  by  the  thought  of 
Dora's  long  waiting  and  sad  sudden  joy — by  the  realisation  of  the 
Christmas  crowds  and  merriment — by  the  sharp  memory  of  his 
own  dead.  Towards  midnight,  when  all  was  still,  he  opened  the 
locked  drawer  which  held  for  him  the  few  things  which  sym- 
bolised and  summed  up  his  past — a  portrait  of  Lucy,  by  the  river 
under  the  trees,  taken  by  a  travelling  photographer,  not  more 
than  six  weeks  before  her  death — a  little  collection  of  pictures  of 
Sandy  from  babyhood  onwards — Louie's  breviary — his  father's 
dying  letter — a  book  which  had  belonged  to  Ancrum,  his  vanished 
friend.  But  though  he  took  thence  his  wife's  picture,  commun- 
ing awhile,  in  a  passion  of  yearning,  with  its  weary  plaintive 
eyes,  he  did  not  allow  himself  to  sink  for  long  into  the  languor 
of  memory  and  grief.  He  knew  the  perils  of  his  own  nature,  and 
there  was  in  him  a  stern  sense  of  the  difficulty  of  living  aright, 
and  the  awfulness  of  the  claim  made  by  God  and  man  on  the 
strength  and  will  of  the  individual.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he 
had  been  '  taught  of  God '  through  natural  affection,  through 
repentance,  through  sorrow,  through  the  constant  energies  of  the 
intellect.  Never  had  the  Divine  voice  been  clearer  to  him,  or  the 
Divine  Fatherhood  more  real.  Freely  he  had  received — but  only 
that  he  might  freely  give.  On  this  Christmas  night  he  renewed 
every  past  vow  of  the  soul,  and  in  so  doing  rose  once  more  into 
that  state  and  temper  which  is  man's  pledge  and  earnest  of 
immortality — since  already,  here  and  now,  it  is  the  eternal  life 
begun. 


THE   END 


THE  COMMON  LOT 

By  ROBERT  HERRICK 
Author  of  "  The  Real  World,"  "  The  Web  of  Life,"  "  The  Gospel  of  Freedom,"  etc. 

Cloth  I2mo  $1.50 

"  Mr.  Herrick  has  written  a  novel  of  searching  insight  and  absorbing  interest;  a  first- 
rate  story  .  .  .  sincere  to  the  very  core  in  its  matter  and  in  its  art."— HAMILTON  W.  M  ABIE. 

"  The  book  is  a  bit  of  the  living  America  of  to-day,  a  true  picture  of  one  of  its  most  sig- 
nificant phases  .  .  .  living,  throbbing  with  reality."  —  New  York  Evening  Mail. 

"  Novels  of  its  style  and  quality  are  few  and  far  between  ...  he  tells  a  story  that  is 
worth  the  telling  ...  it  is  a  study  of  life  as  he  sees  it,  and  as  thousands  of  his  readers  try 
to  avoid  seeing  it."  —  Boston  Transcript. 


The  Queen's  Qliair,  or  The  Six  Years'  Tragedy 

By  MAURICE  HEWLETT 
Author  of  "  Richard  Yea-and-Nay,"  "  The  Forest  Lovers,"  etc.,  etc. 

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"  Mr.  Hewlett  has  produced  in  this  book  an  enthralling  work.  It  is  at  once  a  chronicle 
of  certain  momentous  years  in  the  life  of  his  famous  heroine  and  a  searching  study  of  her 
character.  .  .  .  'The  Queen's  Quair'  is  profoundly  absorbing,  and  no  one  among  the 
novelists  of  to-day  save  Mr.  Hewlett  could  have  written  it.  No  one  else  could  have  sus- 
tained such  a  long  narrative  on  so  high  a  level  with  such  consummate  art." 

—  New  York  Tribune. 

"  No  piece  of  historical  fiction  has  so  adequately  described  the  career  of  the  unfortu- 
nate and  misguided  Queen  of  Scotland,  and  no  other  writer  has  approached  Mr.  Hewlett 
in  dramatic  power  and  literary  skill.  He  uses  words  that  express  his  meaning  pre- 
cisely. .  .  .  His  conciseness  of  forcible  expression  is  indeed  admirable.  The  story,  too, 
is  full  of  action  and  commands  undivided  attention.  Mary's  portrait  leaves  a  lasting  im- 
pression."—  Boston  Budget. 


DOCTOR  TOM,  The  Coroner  of  Brett 

By  JOHN  WILLIAMS   STREETER 
Author  of  "  The  Fat  of  the  Land,"  etc. 

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''A  good  story  of  the  Kentucky  mountains.    The  reader  is  caught  at  the  start  and  held 
to  the  end."  —  New  York  Sun. 

"  One  of  the  best  and  manliest  novels  that  haye  appeared  in  a  year." 

—  Philadelphia  Press. 


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THE   CROSSING 

By  WINSTON  CHURCHILL 
Author  of  "  Richard  Carvel,"  "  The  Crisis,"  etc. 

ILLUSTRATED  IN  COLORS 
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"  Mr.  Churchill's  work,  for  one  reason  or  another,  always  commands  the  attention  of  a 
large  reading  public."  —  The  Criterion. 

" '  The  Crossing '  is  a  thoroughly  interesting  book,  packed  with  exciting  adventure 
and  sentimental  incident,  yet  faithful  to  historical  fact  both  in  detail  and  in  spirit." 

—  The  Dial. 

"  Mr.  Churchill's  romance  fills  in  a  gap  which  history  has  been  unable  to  span,  that 
gives  life  and  color,  even  the  very  soul,  to  events  which  otherwise  treated  would  be  cold 
and  dark  and  inanimate."  —  Mr.  HORACE  R.  HUDSON  in  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 


WHOSOEVER  SHALL  OFFEND 

By  F.  MARION  CRAWFORD 
Author  of  "  The  Heart  of  Rome,"  "  Saracinesca,"  "  Via  Crucis,"  etc. 

ILLUSTRATED  BY  HORACE  T.  CARPENTER 
Cloth  1 2  mo  Si. 50 

"  Not  since  George  Eliot's  '  Romola '  brought  her  to  her  foreordained  place  among  lit- 
erary immortals  has  there  appeared  in  English  fiction  a  character  at  once  so  strong  and 
sensitive,  so  entirely  and  consistently  human,  so  urgent  and  compelling  in  its  appeal  to 
sustained,  sympathetic  interest."  —  Philadelphia  North  American. 

"  She  is  the  most  womanly  woman  Mr.  Crawford  has  given  us  in  many  a  day,  and  after 
her  another  peasant,  bloody,  brooding  Ercole,  is  most  alive."  —  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 


THE  QUEST  OF  JOHN  CHAPMAN 

THE  STORY  OF  A  FORGOTTEN  HERO 

By  NEWELL  DWIGHT  HILLIS,  D.D. 

Author  of  "  The  Influence  of  Christ  in  Modern  Life,"  etc. 

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"  In  this  story  Mr.  Hillis  has  woven  the  life  of  the  Middle  West,  the  heroism  and  holi- 
ness of  those  descendants  of  the  New  England  Puritans  who  emigrated  still  further  into 
the  wilderness.  The  story  is  of  great  spiritual  significance,  and  yet  of  the  earth,  earthy 
—  hence  its  strength  and  vitality."  —  Montreal  Daily  Star. 

"  No  practised  technist  takes  hold  of  his  reader's  interest  with  a  prompter  or  surer  grip 
than  does  this  author  at  the  very  outset.  Nowhere  else  in  his  book  does  he  demonstrate 
his  fitness  for  the  work  of  fiction  better  than  in  the  purely  creative  work.  The  style  leaves 
little  to  be  desired,  for  Dr.  Hillis  is,  as  we  all  know,  a  stylist.  What  perhaps  is  a  surprise 
and  also  a  pleasure,  is  the  dramatic  power  revealed  by  the  author.  The  book  is  forceful, 
its  poetic  opportunities  are  never  missed,  it  is  vivid  and  striking  in  its  scenes,  and  pathos 
is  a  powerful  element  in  the  work."  —  Brooklyn  Daily  Eagle. 


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.    THE  TWO  CAPTAINS 

A   STORY  OF  BONAPARTE  AND  NELSON 

By  CYRUS  TOWNSEND  BRADY 
Author  of  "  A  Little  Traitor  to  the  South,"  etc. 

ILLUSTRATED 
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The  action  takes  place  in  the  years  1793  and  1798.  The  historic  incidents  centre  around 
the  siege  of  Toulon  in  Southern  France  in  1793,  in  which  General  Bonaparte  first  attracts 
the  attention  of  the  world  to  his  genius;  and  the  epoch-marking  Battle  of  the  Nile  in  the 
Bay  of  Aboukir,  in  Egypt,  in  "798,  in  which  Admiral  Nelson  forever  shatters  the  French- 
man's dream  of  empire  in  the  East.  The  story  revolves  around  the  love  of  Captain  Rob- 
ert Macartney,  an  Irishman  who  is  an  officer  in  the  English  Navy  under  Nelson,  and  Louise 
de  Vaude'mont,  granddaughter  of  Vice-Admiral  de  Vaudemont,  a  great  Royalist  noble  and 
officer  of  the  old  Navy  of  France  before  the  Revolution.  One  of  the  leading  characters  is 
Bre'bceuf,  a  silent  Breton  sailor  —  he  does  not  speak  a  dozen  words  in  the  whole  story  — 
who  interferes  at  critical  points  to  promote  the  welfare  of  the  young  lovers  in  most  strik- 
ing and  unconventional  ways.  The  coast  of  Provence,  the  land  of  the  minstrel  and  the 
troubadour,  the  city  of  Toulon,  grim-walled,  cannon-circled,  the  blue  waters  of  the  Medi- 
terranean, the  great  ships-of-the-line,  the  sandy  shores  of  Egypt,  the  ancient  city  of  Alex- 
andria, the  palace  of  the  Khedive,  the  Bay  of  Aboukir,  are  the  successive  settings  of  the 
dramatic  story.  General  Bonaparte  and  Admiral  Nelson  both  take  prominent  parts  in  the 
romance,  and  the  characters  of  these  fascinating  men  are  described  with  fidelity,  accuracy, 
and  brilliancy.  

THE  SECRET  WOMAN 

By  EDEN  PHILLPOTTS 

Author  of  "  The  American  Prisoner,"  "  My  Devon  Year,"  etc. 

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Rude  and  romantic  characters,  descriptions  of  lonely  and  picturesque  Devonshire 
scenery,  and  a  simple  plot  in  which  love  and  passion  play  strong  parts,  are  part  of  the 
secret  of  Mr.  Eden  Phillpotts'  very  strong  hold  on  the  public.  Slow-acting  and  slow- 
speaking  but  deep-feeling  peasants  play  their  parts  in  each  drama  amid  a  character- 
istically wild  but  sympathetic  environment.  The  present  powerful  story  shows  the  author 
at  his  best.  The  real  tragedy  is  not  in  the  actual  murder  and  in  the  shadow  of  the  gal- 
lows, but  in  the  moral  situation  and  the  intense,  engrossing  moral  struggle.  Despite 
certain  faults,  each  character  in  the  story  is  of  high  mind  and  purpose,  unselfish  and 
deserving  of  respect.  What  might  else  be  a  gloomy  theme  is  relieved  by  the  minor  char- 
acters. The  talk  of  the  Devonshire  rustics  is  amusing,  and  every  minor  figure  in  the 
book  is  a  distinct,  true-to-nature  character.  The  descriptions  of  external  nature  are  done 
with  feeling  and  knowledge;  in  this  field  no  other  living  romancer  equals  Mr.  Phillpotts. 
This  work  has  some  of  the  great  qualities  of  serious  literature  —  single  in  purpose,  deep 
in  study  of  motive  and  passion. 

THE  WOMAN  ERRANT 

Being;  Some  Chapters  from  the  Wonder  Book  of  Barbara 

By  the  author  of  "  The  Garden  of  a  Commuter's  Wife,"  etc. 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY  WILL  GREFE 
Cloth  i2mo  $1-50 

"  This  clear-visioned  writer,  calmly  surveying  life  from  the  wholesome  vantage  ground 
of  a  modest,  contented  suburban  home,  is  not  merely  entertaining  each  year  a  growing 
number  of  appreciative  readers,  but  she  is  inculcating  in  her  own  incisive  way  much  of 
that  same  wise  and  simple  philosophy  of  life  that  forms  the  enduring  charm  of  the  essays 
of  Charles  Wagner."  —  New  York  Globe. 


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RECENT    FICTION 

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BARNES  —  THE  UNPARDONABLE  WAR.  By  JAMES  BARNES,  author  of  "  Yankee  Ships 
and  Yankee  Sailors,"  "  Drake  and  his  Yeomen,"  etc. 

A  queer  turn  in  the  political  game;  a  clever  scheme  in  Newspaper  Row;  a  perfectly 
plausible  invention ;  these  are  a  few  of  the  elements  of  interest  in  this  absorbing  story. 

DAVIS  —  FALAISE  OF  THB  BLESSED  VOICE:  A  Tale  of  the  Youth  of  St.  Louis,  King  of 
France.  By  WILLIAM  STEARNS  DAVIS,  author  of  "A  Friend  of  Caesar,"  "God 
Wills  It."  etc. 

A  quick-moving,  interesting  tale  of  the  development  of  the  young  King  Louis  IX  of 
France  under  the  stress  of  a  great  crisis. 

DEEPING—  LOVE  AMONG  THE  RUINS.  By  WARWICK  DEEPING,  author  of  "  Uther  and 
Igraine."  With  illustrations  by  W.  Beiida. 

"  A  vigorous  story  .  .  .  told  in  the  spirit  of  pure  romance." 

—  New  York  Evening  Post. 

HOUSMAN  —  SABRINA  WARHAM  :  The  Story  of  Her  Youth.  By  LAURENCE  HOUSMAN, 
author  of"  Gods  and  Their  Makers,"  etc. 

A  fascinating  study  of  a  woman's  youth  in  one  of  the  coast  counties  of  England,  a 
carefully  drawn  picture  of  ever  interesting  human  types. 

LOVETT  —  RICHARD  GRESHAM.    By  ROBERT  MORSS  LOVETT. 

"  Goes  forward  determinedly  '.  jm  a  singular  opening  to  an  unsuspected  close,  with- 
out faltering  or  wavering  .  .  .  -.  very  honest  piece  of  workmanship." 

—  New  York  Evening  Post. 

LUTHER  —  THE  MASTERY.  By  MARK  LEE  LUTHER,  author  of  "  The  Henchman," 
"  The  Favor  of  Princes,"  etc. 

A  vigorous  and  convincing  story  of  modern  practical  politics,  so  notably  strong  in 
its  sense  of  reality  as  to  give  the  reader  the  thrill  of  a  privileged  glimpse  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  one  great  game. 

OVERTON  —  CAPTAINS  OF  THE  WORLD.  By  GWENDOLEN  OVERTON,  author  of  "  Anne 
Carmel,"  "  The  Heritage  of  Unrest,"  etc. 

An  unusually  fascinating  book  .  .  .  has  the  double  attractive  power  of  earnestness 
and  a  subject  which  compels  sympathetic  attention. 

POTTER  — THE  FLAME  GATHERERS.      By  MARGARET  HORTON  POTTER,   author  of 
"  Istar  of  Babylon,"  etc. 
"  A  wonderful  romance  of  intensity  and  color."  —  Book  News. 

SINCLAIR  —  MANASSAS.  By  UPTON  SINCLAIR,  author  of  "Springtime  and  Harvest," 
etc. 

"  In  no  single  volume  which  we  can  call  to  mind  have  the  undercurrents  of  feeling, 
so  intense  and  so  varied,  that  swayed  men's  minds  in  those  troublous  times,  been  so 
fully  and  well  portrayed." —  The  Times  Dispatch  (Richmond). 

WEBSTER  —  TRAITOR  AND  LOYALIST:  Or,  The  Man  who  Found  his  Country.  By 
HENRY  KITCHELL  WEBSTER,  author  of"  Roger  Drake:  Captain  of  Industry,'  "  The 
Banker  and  the  Bear,"  etc.  With  illustrations  by  Joseph  Cummings  Chase. 

Mr.  Webster's  new  romance  is  one  in  which  love  and  war  contribute  a  full  quota 
of  interest,  intrigue,  thrilling  suspense,  and  hairbreadth  escapes. 


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